HE regrets the passing of David McCallum. Then again the Scottish-born actor lived a rich and mostly robust 90 years, which puts him in a kind of creme de la creme realm. Plus we all have to go sometime.
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Imagine if a straight white male had directed May December (Netflix, 11.17), a movie about a Savannah-residing, May-December couple (Julianne Moore, Charles Melton) and the arrival of a famous actress (Natalie Portman) who will soon be portraying Moore in a film about the couple’s scandalous history.
The couple is based, of course, upon the notorious Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, who began a sexual relationship in 1996 when Letourneau, a grade-school teacher, was 34, and Fualaau, one of her sixth-grade students, was 12. Letourneau did a seven-year stretch for the rape of a minor (1998 to 2004).
They were married in May 2005 when Letourneau was 43 and Fualaau was 22. The marriage lasted 14 years until their separation in 2019. Letourneau died of cancer the following year, at age 58.
May December concerns the long-term outcome of a relationship that began under diseased circumstances — i.e., the sexual grooming of a lad by a woman 22 years his senior. Has anyone said boo about the icky aspects since the film premiered in Cannes last May? They have not.
Imagine if May December was about a gray-haired actor paying an extended visit with a Woody Allen-ish director in his mid 80s along with the director’s wife, a 50ish Asian woman. As with May December, the actor would have been signed to portray this Allen-like director in a film, and his goal would be to learn as much as he can about the beginnings of their relationship in the early ’90s and how they’ve dealt with the public condemnation that resulted from some quarters.
Do you think if Manohla Dargis were to review such a film that she would cream in her slacks like she did when she saw May December four months ago?
“I think the Vietnam War drove a stake right through the heart of America. [And] we’ve never really moved [beyond] that…we never recovered.”
I’ve been to Vietnam three times, and would love to return. I’ve even flirted with the idea or moving there permanently. There’s never been the slightest doubt in my mind that Johnson and Nixon administration policy makers brought immense horror and unimaginable slaughter to that beautiful, once-divided country, but during my three visits I’ve never felt anything but the most tranquil vibes. Nobody has ever given me so much as a hint of a dirty look because of my heritage. The natives who fought against the Americans are, of course, in their 70s and 80s or passed on. The 45-and-unders weren’t even born during the hostilities. Nobody wants to carry that war around — we all want to live in the present.
Which is why I didn’t want to watch Ken Burns and Lynn Novick‘s The Vietnam War, a ten-part, $30 million, 17-hour doc about that tragic conflict, when it premiered on PBS almost exactly six years ago (9.17.17).
But last night…I don’t know why exactly, but I felt suddenly drawn to this miniseries. So I watched three episodes — “The River Styx” (January 1964 – December 1965), “This Is What We Do” (July 1967 – December 1967) and “Things Fall Apart” (January 1968 – July 1968). Five hours without a break. This morning I watched episodes #7, #9 and #10.
I was fascinated, fascinated, horrified, saddened, at times close to tears. What a deluge of death, delusion and horror. Immeasurable and irredeemable. The second most divisive war in U.S. history. And I couldn’t turn it off. Had to see it through. Glad I did.
Posted on 8.22.19: I respect the nostalgia that some have shared about the drive-in experience, and I love the Americana aspect of drive-ins…those iconic images of ‘50s and ‘60s films playing to an army of classic Chevy roadsters, Impalas, Buicks, Dodge station wagons, Cadillacs, Ford Fairlanes and T-Birds.
But if you cared even a little bit about Movie Catholic viewing standards (decent sound, tolerable light levels, no headlights hitting the screen every five minutes) you avoided drive-ins like the plague. If you went to drive-in it was mostly for the heavy breathing, and you brought your own beer.
I never actually “did it” at a drive-in. Too uncomfortable. Lots of second-base and third-base action, but what is that in the greater scheme?
Wise guy to HE: “I guess this explains the affection for Elton John ballads. You really are from Connecticut, aren’t you?”
HE to Wise Guy: “What are you saying, that people actually got laid at the drive-in? Some did, I guess. But they sure kept it a secret.”
The last time I saw a film at a drive-in was sometime in the early to mid ’80s. I think it was a Bob Zemeckis film (Used Cars or Romancing The Stone). Somewhere in the northern Burbank area, or in North Hollywood. My first drive-in experience was with my parents, somewhere in the vicinity of Long Beach Island on the Jersey Shore.
I’m dreaming of Cillian Murphy and his 1930s curly moptop haircut and that same damn look he wears throughout Oppenheimer in every damn scene, and I just can’t watch it a third time, I tell you…I can’t go again! Isn’t it enough that I’ve sat through it twice? I awake at 3:30 am and my pillow is damp. It’s a dense and accomplished film but it doesn’t breathe and it feels like work. I struggled so hard the second time…please, not a third. I’ve paid my dues, leave me alone, etc.
My reservations aside, I think it’s really great that Oppenheimer has performed as well as it has. It’s one of the best things that has happened theatrically since the all-but-total devastation ushered in by the pandemic.
I’ve never derided Oppenheimer as any kind of bad or less than immaculate film. It’s clearly a top-tier smarthouse thing — brilliant, ultra-cerebral. It’s never less than “impressive.”
I just found it strenuous and chilly and rigid…an under-oxygenated forced march with a lot of overly wound-up, perturbed academics and a few upper-level bureaucrats.
Not to mention the arduous company of two very angry, brittle and neurotic women who constantly seethed and lashed out. When Florence Pugh’s subordinate character (Oppie’s Communist lover) committed suicide, I honestly felt relieved. I muttered to myself “one down, one to go.”
The world agrees that Nolan should henceforth steer clear of sex scenes. I didn’t believe that Murphy’s Oppie was even capable of sexual thoughts, much less arousal and much, much less actual coitus.
Thank God for Matt Damon’s brass-tacks “what are the basic dynamics?” scenes with Murphy.
It’s quite the vivid, you-are-there symphony and I felt genuine respect and even awe at times for Nolan’s herculean efforts, but at the same time I felt trapped. It started to wear me down, man, and you’ll never convince me that omitting the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the right way to go.
And I really didn’t care for Murphy’s company. I tolerated his frozen eyes and aloof, twerpy manner but I kept saying “what is it with this fucking guy? I’m stuck hanging out with a Martian.”
If you’re checking your watch at the one-hour mark (as I did during my initial 70mm IMAX viewing at AMC’s Lincoln Square) and going “dear God, there’s another two hours to go”…if you’re saying that to yourself there’s something wrong.
Yes, it improves during the second hour and I felt more and more sorry for the poor guy when the D.C. wolves did their level best to taunt and persecute him, but Oppie cooked his own goose by alienating Truman (I’ll never forget that look of rage and disgust on Gary Oldman’s face) and failing to understand that longstanding sympathies and allegiances with Communists would land him in trouble, especially given that he’s repeatedly warned about this throughout the first two-thirds.
I just found Oppie an extremely odd duck and quietly arrogant to boot. If I didn’t know the whole story backwards and forwards I would’ve felt no investment in his fate whatsoever. I felt much more rapport with Russell Crowe‘s John Nash in A Beautiful Mind (’01) or Eddie Redmayne‘s Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (’14).
Two-time Oscar winner Shelley Winters (1920-2006) was the absolute best — no side-stepping, said what she felt, straight-from-the-gut candor at all times. And I’m not just saying this because I ran into her a few times and liked her from the get-go. Always an artist first and a diplomat second. Smarts, steel, liberal-progressive views, etc.
I never realized she was a frank and gutsy personality until I saw her go up against the chauvinistic Oliver Reed on Johnny Carson‘s Tonight Show — a legendary encounter that ended with Winters pouring an alcoholic drink over Reed’s head.
My first conversation with Winters happened inside the Plaza Hotel during the filming of Frank Pierson‘s King of the Gypsies (’78), in which she was costarring with Sterling Hayden, Susan Sarandon and Eric Roberts. A brief exchange of pleasantries, nothing more.
My second Winters encounter happened in Los Angeles around five years later, in late 1983. I was seated right next to her at a Cannon Films press luncheon for Over the Brooklyn Bridge (held just prior to shooting). We were chatting amiably about everything…good vibes. When producer-director Menahem Golan got up before a mike and began making a speech, Winter began shaking her head and said to anyone within earshot at our table, “Don’t like him… nope, don’t like him.”
That was it — I was in love.
I met Winters again in 1997 at the Silver Spoon, a now-destroyed breakfast place in West Hollywood, while interviewing with Jackie Brown‘s Robert Forster She walked up to our table, Forster introduced us, I recapped our slight history, etc. Winters told me I reminded her of an old boyfriend from New York.
Winters knew Marilyn Monroe pretty well, roomed with her for about a year between 1947 and ’48. For decades after Monroe’s passing Winters was repeatedly asked about her, and offered pretty much the same recollections.
Monroe began to enjoy life a bit in the late ’40s, Winters said, and had a genuinely thrilling and abundant life in the ’50s, but not so much in the early ’60s. Monroe wasn’t well educated but was highly intelligent and constantly reading. Totally into older-guy father figures. No family, no support group, suspicious of most would-be friends or acquaintances. Key quote: “If she’d been a little dumber, she would’ve been happier.”
Monroe began to slip into an increasingly troubled place when she hit her mid 30s, which, back in the day, was when actresses needed to begin thinking about transitioning into character roles and/or playing mothers, or so Winters believed. But in the early ’60s the big studios didn’t want Monroe as a character actress — they wanted her to go on being a 25-year-old blonde sexpot forever. (When Winters signed to play a 40ish old-school motherly type in The Diary of Anne Frank, for which she later won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, director George Stevens told her that “because of this role you’ll be able to work for the rest of your life.”)
Winters believed that Monroe’s August 1962 death from a sleeping-pill overdose was most likely an accident, and that she’d just forgotten how many she’d taken earlier. “I’ve done that,” Winters said.
I’ve been wondering about the curious absence of Black Flies (Open Road, 11.30) since its 5.18.23 debut in Cannes.
It may not be a great, game-changing film or what any fair-minded viewer might call piercing or compassionate or startlingly original, but I for one decided right away that it’s a more absorbing dive into the lives of living-on-the-ragged-edge paramedics than Martin Scorsese‘s Bringing Out The Dead (’99).
Like it or not, this is my opinion and I’ve no intention of modifying or watering it down.
Based on a drawn-from-hard-experience 2008 novel of the same name by Shannon Burke, adapted by Ryan King and Ben Mac Brown and directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, Black Flies didn’t deserve a 47% Rotten Tomatoes rating.
It stars Sean Penn, Tye Sheridan, Katherine Waterston, Michael Pitt, Mike Tyson and Raquel Nave.
In a 5.25 assessment of the Cannes Film Festival (“At a Particularly Strong Cannes Film Festival, Women’s Desires Pull Focus“), N.Y. Times critic and gender celebrationist Manohla Dargis not only dismissed Black Flies but called it “ridiculous.” That means it made her angry.
Dargis wasn’t alone. A significant percentage of Cannes critics ganged up on Black Flies due to what they saw as an overly unsympathetic view of Brooklyn’s primitive, ragged-edge underclass.
Film Verdict‘s Jay Weissberg accused it of being “tone-deaf” and hampered by a “problematic treatment of immigrant communities and women.”
Translation: Some critics detected a certain callousness flecked with racism and sexism. I found that view simplistic and ridiculous.
HE verdict, posted on 5.19: “It beats the shit out of you, this film, but in a way that you can’t help but admire. It’s a tough sit but a very high-quality one. The traumatized soul of lower-depths Brooklyn and the sad, ferociously angry residents who’ve been badly damaged in ways I’d rather not describe has never felt more in-your-face.
“In terms of assaultive realism and gritty authenticity Black Flies matches any classic ’70s or ’80s New York City film you could mention…The French Connection, Serpico, Prince of the City, Q & A, Good Time, Across 110th Street.
“And what an acting triumph for Sean Penn, who plays the caring but worn-down and throughly haunted Gene Rutkovsky, a veteran paramedic who bonds with and brings along Tye Sheridan‘s Ollie Cross, a shaken-up Colorado native who lives in a shitty Chinatown studio and is trying to get into medical school.
“Rutkovsky is a great hardboiled character, and Penn has certainly taken the bull by the horns and delivered his finest performance since his Oscar-winning turns in Mystic River (’03) and Milk (’08).
“And Sheridan is also damn good in this, his best film ever. His character eats more trauma and anxiety and suffers more spiritual discomfort than any rookie paramedic deserves, and you can absolutely feel everything that’s churning around inside the poor guy.
“At first I thought this 120-minute film would be Bringing Out The Dead, Part 2, but Black Flies, which moves like an express A train and feels more like 90 minutes, struck me as harder and punchier than that 1999 Martin Scorsese film, which I didn’t like all that much after catching it 23 and 1/2 years ago and which I’ve never rewatched.
I’m just going to cough this up and let the chips fall…
The four finest films of the 2023 Telluride Film Festival — the ones that boasted the highest levels of craftsmanship, and which will really get through to Average Joes and Janes and cause their hearts and minds to snap to attention — are Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers (a ’70s film, yes, but a first-rate specimen of this type), Tran Anh Hung‘s The Taste of Things (i.e., The Pot-au-Feu), Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things and lastly Ilker Çatak’s The Teacher’s Lounge, the official German submission for Best Int’l feature.
Okay, I’ll make it five — Errol Morris‘s The Pigeon Tunnel, a richly visual, beautifully scored doc about John le Carre…enveloping and rather dazzling.
Actually there’s a sixth that got me — Aki Kaurismäki‘s Fallen Leaves, a Chaplinesque, slightly glum relationship comedy-drama. Costars Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen deliver quietly touching performances.
On my last day (i.e., yesterday) I saw and rather liked Pawo Choyning Dorji‘s The Monk and the Gun. I wasn’t floored but enjoyed it for the most part. Set in Bhutan in 2006, it’s an ensemble comedy about the citizens of that land-locked Asian country having their first encounter with democracy. I’ll write about it later this week.
There’s also Justine Triet‘s Anatomy of a Fall — a smart (if somewhat muted) mixture of an investigative procedural and courtroom drama. Fully respectable and recommended, but rather long.
So I saw four big winners, one striking documentary destined to endure, an adult-angled investigative whodunit, and two films that are entirely decent and winning in unusual ways. Eight in all.
None of the other films shown at Telluride really stuck to the wall, and will almost certainly not stir much excitement when they open commercially.
Yes, Poor Things was the biggest conversation flick, but the gymnastic “furious jumping” scenes and the generally bawdy “Bride of Frankenstein” sexuality will probably diminish enthusiasm among older industry audiences. SAG members will nominate Emma Stone for Best Actress, of course, but overall the Poor Things carnality has a vibe that comes close to what used to be called hard-R exploitation, except in this instance it’s very Terry Gilliam-esque. Several noms in various categories are likely, but I suspect that over-40 voters will withdraw a bit.
I felt mildly diverted by George C. Wolfe’s Rustin, but never gripped. The movie is just okay; it certainly never winds you up. If Colman Domingo’s spirited performance as civil rights leader Bayard Rustin lands a Best Actor Oscar nomination, fine. But it’ll be a gimmee…a political gesture that everyone will feel obliged to ratify and approve. If the Obamas were truly enthusiastic about this film they would have attended Telluride, or so my gut tells me. Their absence spoke volumes.
I didn’t see Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Nyad (Netflix), but the general reaction seemed to be that Annette Bening‘s performance is highly respectable but her Diana Nyad is a real bitch. People never just vote for the craft aspect — they also vote the character. If the character is seriously unlikable…
The Telluride foo-foos can enthuse all they want about Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers. It’s a very soulful film, gently haunting and certainly well-crafted in many respects, but I know what older straight guys tend to feel and respond to, and a lot of them are going to quietly clear their throats during the sex scenes, which happen between the talented and genuine Andrew Scott and the hugely annoying Paul Mescal. If Mescal’s boyfriend character had been played by a Brad Pitt-level hottie in his late 20s or early 30s, fine, but Mescal is impossible. You can’t expect older straight guys to feel charged about watching a couple of British guys with heavy beard stubble (and one with a dorky moustache)…enough said.
Forget Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders — it didn’t work at the festival and it won’t happen when it opens. Ditto Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, which is basically shallow, glossy trash. Watching Barry Keoghan play a creep is a chore. I really hated it, and so did a lot of other Telluride viewers.
I didn’t see Ethan Hawke‘s Wildcat, a narrative drama about Flannery O’Connor, but everyone told me it wasn’t very good. I’m sorry but no one spoke up for it.
I also couldn’t fit in Daddio, the dialogue-driven two-hander with Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn.
I watched the slow-moving Janet Planet for about an hour on my final day…not my cup.
The long-established consensus is that Rex's Harrison Best Actor Oscar for his My Fair Lady performance was, at the very least, unfortunate, particularly given the calibre of the competition -- Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton in Becket, Anthony Quinn in Zorba the Greek, and Peter Sellers' trio of performances in Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
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I’ve just finished reading an IndieWire Emmy-hype interview with The Last of Us co-showrunner Craig Mazin.
Written by Ben Travers, it gets right into the divided reactions to Episode 3, which was titled “Long, Long Time.” Divided, I mean, between heartfelt admiration (although some critics were afraid of going negative for fear of being called homophobes) and serious squeamishness, especially in the matter of Nick “please don’t drop that towel!” Offerman.
Posted on 2.1.23: “So the producers of The Last of Us decided to abandon the basic zombie apocalypse narrative in order to tell a domestic love story (a sad one) between two middle-aged men with hairy chests and beards.
“It’s very well finessed all around (I half-chuckled at the gay strawberries scene until it led to smooching) but I’m afraid I’ve been permanently traumatized by that sex scene in the upstairs queen bed.
“Watching a prelude to the naked-ass Bartlett giving naked-ass Offerman a blowjob…good God in heaven and Jesus H. Christ! I’m not endorsing the IMDB review bombing, but I understand it. I’ll be having nightmares about this, and about images of bear sex in particular.
“I will never, ever derive the slightest amount of anything from watching older bearded guys…I don’t want to think about it.
“I was terrified of watching Offerman and Bartlett…truly and profoundly uncomfortable. And I’m saying this as one of the biggest fans ever of Brokeback Mountain.”
Travers excerpt: “When The Last of Us released its third episode, ‘Long, Long Time,’ reactions surfaced faster than fungi on an infected host.
“Many (including IndieWire) praised the episode for its aching love story, wherein Bill (Nick Offerman), a survivalist holed up in a makeshift fortress, and Frank (Murray Bartlett), a stranger who wanders into one of Bill’s traps, fall in love and — despite their post-apocalyptic environs — build a life together. Seeing that life unfold marks a pivot (or departure) from the original plot, tracking new characters whose story can stand on its own, even when it eventually loops back to our primary leads.
“Not everyone liked it. Today’s day and age of second-screen viewing paired with snap judgements doesn’t always reward atypical TV structure, and ‘Long, Long Time’ faced its share of backlash.
Mazin: “Some people didn’t like Episode 3 because, you know, gay stuff. And then they kind of retroactively try and come up with a [different and inoffensive] reason why. [But] one of the complaints I saw was, ‘Oh, it’s just a filler episode…it doesn’t advance the story.’ And I was like, ‘I think this episode advances the story more than any other episode we have’ — because it’s not plot, it’s character. It’s the letter Bill leaves behind to Joel that powers the rest of the show.”
Posted on 8.22.07: It's too early to get into James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma (Lionsgate, 9.7) which has a lot of good things going for it and will probably, I'm guessing, be widely liked. But if this film was an interactive video game with plastic pistols, I would have spent my whole time firing at Ben Foster's nutball bad guy. I wanted him dead -- morte -- as soon as he came on-screen. I almost mean Foster himself rather than the villain he plays.
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It is HE’s opinion that the extended unrated version of Barry Levinson, Warren Beatty and James Toback‘s Bugsy is a distinctly superior work.
The extended version runs 151 minutes, or 15 minutes longer than the original 136-minute theatrical cut.
And there’s still no HD version available, either streaming or on physical media. 16 and 1/2 years have passed since the extended version was released on DVD in mid December 2006. Somebody should do something about this.
I wrote about the Bugsy extended cut on 12.12.06.
I based my piece almost entirely upon what what Dave Kehr had written the same day in the N.Y. Times. I had, however, been told separately about the circumstances of the removal of the 15 minutes of footage by Toback; he also passed along the same story to Kehr.
Jim told me it was Medavoy who wanted it shorter. Kehr seemed to say it was either Medavoy or perhaps some sinister alternate force within Tristar.
It just seems vaguely indecent that the superior longer cut isn’t on HD streaming. A 4K disc would be nice but not necessary — just high-def would suffice. I really hate watching it on 480p.
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