When I spoke last Friday to Renee Zellweger at the annual Telluride brunch, she looked exactly (and very fetchingly) like a somewhat older but entirely vibrant and relaxed version of Dorothy Boyd, the lover and wife of Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. She looked like herself, I mean, and well-tended at that.

Zellweger was 26 or thereabouts when she costarred in that landmark Cameron Crowe film. Now she’s 50, and has some kind of serene, settled, casually glowing thing going on. If I didn’t know her and someone told me she was 45, I wouldn’t have blinked an eye.

Why did I just write two paragraphs about Zellweger’s appearance instead of her exceptional, affecting performance as Judy Garland in Rupert Goold‘s Judy (Roadside, 10.4)? It’s water under the bridge but five years ago everyone was saying Zellweger looked like someone else. Which, to be honest, she did for a certain period.

And now, in a new Vulture profile, Jonathan Van Meter has touched on “the subject” and shared the same view. Renee looks like Renee, all is well, etc.

As noted previously, Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman (debuting at the New York Film Festival on 9.27) runs in the vicinity of 209 minutes, give or take. This morning the NYFF’s press screening schedule stated that the Netflix release runs 210 minutes but that this is “approximate and subject to change.”

But of course. All directors like to fiddle around until the last minute. They usually stop editing under duress because distribution deadlines demand it. In Scorsese’s case this could mean some kind of last-minute subtraction or addition. No worries either way. Like any artist Scorsese is a constant searcher and rephraser, but always the master of his own house.

“I’m a white man and I’m straight, and I deserve it”…hah-hah.

In and of itself, behaving like an antagonistic asshole on purpose (i.e., inappropriate meta performance art) has never been “funny”, not to me and certainly not consistently, and therefore Between Two Ferns with Zack Galifianakis has, for myself and presumably others, always been a flatline experience.

Okay, every now and then this kind of material raises a smirk but that’s all. I half-chuckled when Brad Pitt spit at Zack five years ago.

The idea of myopic dickead-ism may be conceptually “funny” in a certain ironic light, but Galifianakis himself has never been funny, not really and not even in the first Hangover. I recognize this is a minority opinion as far as that 2009 film is concerned, but everyone was with me by the time the third Hangover film appeared.

Galafianakis managed to deliver a truly engaging performance exactly once, as Michael Keaton‘s agent in Birdman.

Almost everyone has appeared on the show as a way of asserting that they’re heh-heh-wink-wink cool and perceptive enough to get unfunny performance art and make fun of celebrityhood (and themselves) in the bargain, but theatrically or dramatically speaking it doesn’t make the slightest lick of sense that Matthew McConaughey, Benedict Cumberbatch, Peter Dinklage, Chrissy Teigen, David Letterman, Jason Schwartzman, Tiffany Haddish, Paul Rudd, Rashida Jones, John Legend, Adam Scott, Brie Larson, Jon Hamm, Awkwafina, Hailee Steinfeld, John Cho, Keanu Reeves, Chance the Rapper and Tessa Thompson would agree to sit with this meta-asshole.

And therefore Between Two Ferns: The Movie (Netflix, 9.20) is going to be, like, “seriously, c’mon…whatever.”

I wanted to catch today’s 4 pm showing of Edward Norton‘s Motherless Brooklyn, but I couldn’t do that and catch my 7pm flight out of Durango. So I left Telluride around 1 pm. Around 2 pm I began feeling little tugs of sleep, but I resisted them. A couple of times I actually slapped myself to stay awake. Just outside of Mancos my eyes wouldn’t stop closing so fuck it, I pulled over. I crawled into the back seat and slept for an hour. I’m glad I did this. It was the intelligent thing to do.

Obviously Hurricane Dorian, a Category Five storm, is a terrible beast that needs to be avoided at all costs. Winds between 185 to 200 miles per hour. But at the same time there’s something less than 100% fearsome about a storm that’s only moving along between one and five miles per hour. Obviously this is a serious life-and-death threat, but if I was Long John Silver with a wooden crutch I could probably out-walk this thing. For a storm to be truly scary it has to move swiftly. I’m talking about vague impressions here, not the meteorological reality.

One measure of a gripping Telluride film, for me, is catching a 10:30 pm showing (and they always start late) and maintaining an absolute drill-bit focus on each and every aspect for 135 minutes, and then muttering to myself “yeah, that was something else” as I walked back to the pad in near total darkness (using an iPhone flashlight app to see where I was walking) around 1 am.

This is what happened last night between myself and Trey Edward Shults‘ Waves (A24, 11.1).

Set in an affluent ‘burb south of Miami, Waves is a meditative, deep-focus tragedy about an African-American family coping with the effects of high-pressure expectations and toxic masculinity.

The bringer of these plague motivators is dad Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), the owner of a construction business and one tough, clenched, hard-ass dude. He injects all of this and more into 18 year-old son Tyler (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), a somewhat cocky high-school wrestling team star who’s looking at a top-notch college and a go-getter future.

Watching on the sidelines is Tyler’s kid sister Emily (Taylor Russell), a quiet, keep-to- herself type. Their stepmom Catherine (Renee Elise Goldsberry) is a gentle smoother-over, and a counterweight to Ronald’s aggressive approach to parenting.

Tyler’s situation is aggravated when he tears a shoulder muscle and is told by a doctor that he has to stop wrestling. Tyler naturally decides to hide this from Ronald. But the real flash point occurs when Tyler’s spunky-hot girlfriend Alexis (Alexa Demie) finds herself pregnant, and announces that she wants to “keep it.” It?

Tyler freaks (sudden fatherhood at 18 being more or less synonymous with economic enslavement and close to a death sentence in terms of college and opportunity), Alexis freaks right back and blocks him, he responds by snorting and drinking and driving off, and then things come to a horrific climax at a party.

And so ends Part One of Waves, which is a cleanly organized two-parter. And then begins Part Two, which is mostly about Emily quietly coping with the aftermath of Tyler’s tragedy, and Ronald and Catherine all but shut down and incapacitated by it.

The bulk of this section is about Emily meeting and then going out with Luke (Manchester By The Sea‘s Lucas Hedges, somewhat heavier and wearing the same tennisball haircut he had in Mid90s and Ben Is Back). They gradually start going on missions together (including a visit to Weeki Wachee, which I haven’t been to since I was 14) and talking about their buried backstories, in particular Luke’s dying ex-druggie dad.

And then finally Ronald and Emily have “the talk” in which Ronald more or less admits that he pushed the wrong buttons with Tyler and that he’s trying to forgive himself, etc.

Fernando Meirelles‘ The Two Popes is an interesting, mildly appealing two-hander as far as it goes. I had serious trouble with the refrigator temps as I watched, but I probably would have felt…well, somewhere between faintly underwhelmed and respectfully attentive even under the best of conditions.

It’s a wise, intelligent, non-preachy examination of conservative vs progressive mindsets (focused on an imagined, drawn-out discussion between Anthony Hopkins‘ Pope Benedict and Jonathan Pryce‘s Pope Francis a few years back) in a rapidly convulsing world, and I could tell from the get-go that Anthony McCarten‘s script is choicely phrased and nicely honed. But I couldn’t feel much arousal. I sat, listened and pondered, but nothing ignited. Well, not much.

Possibly on some level because I’ve never felt the slightest rapport with the Catholic church, and because for the last 20 or 30 years I’ve thought of it in Spotlight terms, for the most part.

I love that Pope Francis (formerly or fundamentally Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina) is a humanist and a humanitarian with simple tastes, and I was delighted when he jerked his hand away when Donald Trump tried to initiate a touchy-flicky thing a couple of years ago. And I’m certainly down with any film in which two senior religious heavyweights discuss the Beatles, “Eleanor Rigby” and Abbey Road, etc.

But it just didn’t seem to amount to that much. For me. Maybe because I’m a lapsed Episcopalian from way back, or maybe because I’ve always considered myself, spiritually speaking, to be an LSD mystic by way of the Bhagavad Gita.

No disrespect to Meirelles, Pryce and Hopkins and the other principals. I just didn’t feel it. Please don’t let this stop you if you’re inclined to give it a shot when it starts streaming on Netflix. It’s fine. Just because a film is good, sturdy and respectable doesn’t mean you’re obliged to sing hosannahs.

My first impression of Tom Harper‘s The Aeronauts (Amazon, 12.6.19) was one of dismay and disappointment. Why, I asked myself, is Telluride screening an implausible, broad-brush fantasy adventure, based on an actual 19th Century hot-air balloon feat but nonetheless fictionalized to showcase the bravery of an imagined female lead…why is Telluride screening this for serious cineastes when it was obviously made for the family crowd?

Everything about The Aeronauts seems tailored to the lowest-common-denominator ADD demo. Every line and scene is aimed at the peanut gallery. Every potential risk and thrill element (almost falling out of the passenger basket, climbing up the side of a balloon in frigid weather) struck me as cartoonishly crude and exaggerated. The recreations of early 1860s London felt about as genuinely atmospheric as the depictions of mid 1930s London in Mary Poppins Returns, which is to say “pass the crackerjack.” It all feels like a movie — a show for the shmoes.

The Aeronauts is, however, based on a historic 1862 balloon voyage by James Glaisher (played by Eddie Redmayne) and Henry Coxwell.

Departing from Wolverhampton in England’s West Midlands district, the team broke the world flight altitude record that day by reaching about 11,887 meters, or 38,999 feet. Glaisher blacked out somewhere around 29,000 feet. The cold caused Coxwell to lose all sensation in his hands, but he nonetheless managed to pull the balloon’s valve cord with his teeth before losing consciousness. The balloon landed safely in Ludlow, about 34 miles southwest of Wolverhampton.

Harper’s film, co-written with Jack Thorne, sticks to the basic story but jettisons Coxwell for a fictionalized female balloonist, Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones). Except Wren isn’t that fictionalized as she’s based on two 19th Century adventurers — French aeronaut Sophie Blanchard and the British-born Margaret Graham.

Wren’s relationship with late husband Pierre (an Aeronauts backstory) is chiefly based on Sophie Blanchard’s flights with husband Jean-Pierre Blanchard, while Pierre’s death is inspired by that of Thomas Harris on 5.25.24.

I hadn’t done much research before seeing The Aeronauts, but since the greatest perils that befall the voyage are thin air and frigid temps, the viewer naturally wonders why the balloonists decide to ascend six or seven miles into the heavens. They had to know they’d be venturing into harm’s way.

I’ve just come out of what may have been the most uncomfortable screening of my entire theatrical moviegoing life.

I’m not talking about the film I saw — Fernando Meirelles‘ The Two Popes, an engagingly thoughtful, well-written, occasionally comedic relationship drama about Pope Benedict XVI (Anthony Hopkins) and Pope Francis (Jonathan Pryce). I’m talking about the arctic frigidaire climate inside Telluride’s Galaxy theatre.

The house was filled with warm bodies, but I was all but unable to focus on the film because I was trembling and hugging myself to death. I was half watching the Popes while my other half couldn’t stop dreaming about pleasuring myself with a winter coat and scarf, or a goose down quilt. I’m sorry but that’s what happened.

I finally caught Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story Saturday evening. With all the buzz I was more or less expecting the moon, I suppose, but I wasn’t disappointed. It didn’t quite melt me down like Kramer vs. Kramer did 40 years ago, but it sure softened me up. Which it to say I felt “met” on adult terra firma, and within a fully recognizable realm.

It’s more Ingmar Bergman than Robert Benton-esque. But sensibly so. Like all fine, steady, smart films that open between October and December, Marriage Story delivers the goods in a way that seems to fundamentally apply. It’s “one of those.” And I didn’t think of it as Black Widow vs. Kylo Ren. Well, if their defenses were considerably lessened.

I felt vaguely unsure where it was going or what it was up to a couple of times, but I mainly felt like I was in good, safe hands — gripped, touched, respectful, comfortable (because it never goes crazy or overly dark, it never breaks the trust) and always recognizing the truth of what’s on the plate.

Marriage Story is easily Baumbach’s best film, above and beyond The Squid and the Whale, and surely contains the best, most fully felt, deep-from-within performances that Adam Driver and Scarlet Johansson have given thus far. It’ll be really, really difficult for them to top this.

Best Picture nom, Best Director/Original Screenplay noms (Baumbach), Best Actor and Actress (Driver, ScarJo) and maybe a Best Supporting Actress nom for Laura Dern because of a single, third-act rant she delivers about society’s unfair attitudes toward women in terms of idealized “male gaze” expectations, and probably a nomination for composer Randy Newman.

The costar performances are just right — Azhy Robertson as Henry, Alan Alda and Ray Liotta as attorneys with radically different styes, Merritt Wever, Julie Hagerty, et. al.

It’s an honestly felt, emotionally complex (and sometimes convulsive) marital-downswirl drama, but with a rather middle (moneyed) class attitude…acrimony tempered by sensible sensibilities. Fundamentally decent people with the usual issues and shortcomings, but nobody’s a raving lunatic Nobody throws up or gets busted in some lewd, embarassing infidelity or throws a frying pan or drives a car off a bridge or runs naked into a traffic jam.

Driver and ScarJo are the married, Brooklyn-residing Charlie and Nicole, the latter a successful theatre director and the former his star performer who feels overshadowed by Charlie’s egocentric attitudes and looking to possibly re-launch her acting career in Los Angeles with a promising TV series.

From this point on, no semi-hip person will be able to contemplate, discuss or even tap out a tweet about Joker without dealing with the side-issue that stubbornly refuses to go away…incels!

The only disappointment of Telluride ‘19 that comes to mind is Tom and Julie’s curious decision not to screen it. Seriously, why didn’t they? It’s the thing to see right now.

(a) …that I’ve missed the 1 pm Chuck Jones showing of Fernando Meirelles‘ The Two Popes. Now, if I want to be vigilant, I’ll have to catch it tomorrow morning at 9:30, except that’s when I need to file;
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(b) …that every time a hurricane approaches the news networks always insist upon trying to amplify or otherwise whip up the fear over actual threat levels. It’s partly about responsibility (people should know the hard facts and act responsibly) and partly selling fear. People always tune in when afraid, and the news guys are always ready to sell the shit out of the possibility of death and destruction;

(c) …that I have a hole in the left pocket of my tight black jeans, and that when I forget and drop some coins in regardless (because I’m absent-minded) it always seems to take a good ten minutes for all the coins to work their way down my leg and out onto the sidewalk;

(d) …that all three of my pocket combs (primary plus two back-ups) fell out of my rear pocket of my unlucky white jeans yesterday, and now I’m combless until I can find a store that sells them (which is no easy feat if you know Telluride).

(e) …and for this: