Craig Brewer‘s Dolemite Is My Name (Netflix) feels like an odd duck. To me “Dolemite” is the mispelled name of a northern Italy mountain range (Dolomite) that I visited in May of ’92 for a N.Y. Times interview with Sylvester Stallone. (He was shooting Cliffhanger in and around Cortina d’Ampezzo, and I’d wrangled a freelance assignment.) But if you know who standup comedian Rudy Ray Moore was, Dolemite was an alter ego personality he created in the mid ’70s as well as a 1975 blaxploitation movie by the same name.

In Brewer’s film Moore is played by 58-year-old Eddie Murphy, and the idea, obviously, is to deliver a kind of 21st Century blaxploitation satire about a big-ego guy trying to crash the ’70s blaxploitation racket.

It looks “funny” after a fashion, but with the age factor, the moderate weight gain, the moustache and ’70s hair, Murphy doesn’t look like Murphy any more. I recognize Wesley Snipes, of course, but Murphy looks like his own older brother.

I loved Brewer’s Hustle and Flow (’05) and I’m a longtime fan of screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, but what am I supposed to do with this? A lot of characters in this thing are kinda doughy-looking. (And I’m borrowing that term from the film itself.)

I didn’t feel this way at all about Hustle and Flow. I couldn’t wait to revel in that film. The first Sundance screening was electric.

The funniest line in the trailer is when Murphy and Mike Epps are watching Billy Wilder‘s The Front Page, ands Epps says, “This ain’t funny”…true! “And here ain’t no brothers in it either.”

Apologies for the postage-stamp size of the trailer. That awful Brightcove coding…I hate those guys.

We all have hundreds of films on our “caught it once, hated it, never again” list. But what about a film you completely fell for — one that flipped a deep-down pleasure switch and made you feel pretty great about everything– but have never revisited, and haven’t even thought about for decades?

For me Francois Truffaut‘s Small Change (L’Argent de poche) is one such film. I’m not a fan of movies about kids and in fact I usually run in the opposite direction, but this was a remarkable exception. Released in ’76, it was made by and for adults, and generated a steady, non-strenuous, matter-of-fact attitude. Plus it empathized with little kids in a way that I found almost entrancing. I would stream it right now but it’s only on DVD.

By the way: Color photography wasn’t exactly an exotic feature in the ’70s, and color TV had been totally standard since ’65 or thereabouts. But pro-level photographers (those who worked for newspapers and syndicates) always shot in monochrome. News outlets wanted black-and-white images and that was what they got. Plus rolls of color film were expensive compared to b&w, not to mention the processing. Plus every photographer worth his or her salt has always preferred the monochrome palette.

I just don’t think of the ’70s as a black-and-white era whereas the mid ’50s and before (going all the way back to mid 1880s daguerrotypes) always seemed like natural black-and-white habitats.

YouTube comment thread: “The Abbey Road deluxe edition [contains] the following: “Something” (stunning take 37 with jam), “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” (take 21), “Oh! Darling” (early version with alternate vocal), “Octopus’s Garden” (take 32), “Because” (isolated vocals), “Her Majesty” (complete version), “Here Comes The Sun” (instrumental version) and more, including [an] instrumental version of complete alternate medley.”

There’s a general longstanding tendency among film critics to go easy on expensive big studio films. Turn the other cheek, avoid sharp judgments or tough terminology, describe them as half-full glasses of water rather than half empty.

But critics always feel free to say whatever in the case of smaller, indie-level films. They’ll stand back if the filmmaker is well-respected. Or, in today’s context, if the film has the Good Wokester Seal of Approval, in which case everyone puts on the kid gloves again. This is just human nature.

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From late ’80 to mid ’83 I was managing editor of The Film Journal, a monthly exhibitor trade publication. That meant I was regularly invited to long-lead screenings, or screenings that would happen three to four weeks before hitting theatres, and sometimes five or six weeks. And that was a truly beautiful thing because I got to discover films in a relatively virginal condition, before the early buzz had began to circulate.

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“Crossed Swords,” a short item about Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story, posted on 8.21.18:

“I for one am keen to see Noah Baumbach‘s untitled divorce movie, which Netflix will release…you tell me.

“Costar Ray Liotta provided a capsule synopsis in a Business Insider interview that ran a couple of months ago.

“‘Yeah…I’m a lawyer in it,’ Liotta said. ‘Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson‘s characters are going through a divorce, he comes to me and I’m a lawyer who explains all these ways we can get stuff out of her in the divorce, and he’s, like ‘No, that’s too aggressive.’ So he ends up going to court, and there he realizes that Scarlett has a lawyer who’s really aggressive. So then he’s, like, ‘Oh, shit’ and he comes back to me to represent him.’

“That Norman Mailer quote: ‘You don’t know a woman until you’ve met her in court.’

“Perhaps the coolest thing that my ex-wife Maggie and I ever did was not get into a big, drawn-out fight during our divorce, which took a few months from late ’91 to August ’92. I was devastated about her moving to San Francisco with the boys, but I visited them all the time and took them with me to see my parents. And then she and the kids moved back to Los Angeles in ’04, which was great. And then they moved back north, and then to Brookline. But seeing Jett and Dylan was never an issue.”

Principal photography happened between January and March of 2018. Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Merritt Wever and Azhy Robertson also costar.

Marriage Story is the only film being screened at all four early-fall festivals — Venice (debuting on 8.29.19), Telluride, Toronto and New York.

HE’s favorite Coen Bros. comedy, and that’s saying something considering my endless love for Burn After Reading, which I’ve watched at least five or six times. Way better than The Ladykillers, needless to add.

From 8.11 N.Y. Times report by By Katie Benner, Danielle Ivory and Richard A. Oppel Jr.: “Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who apparently hanged himself in a federal jail in Manhattan, was supposed to have been checked by guards every 30 minutes, but that procedure was not being followed the night before he was found, a law-enforcement official with knowledge of his detention said.

“In addition, the jail had transferred his cellmate and allowed Mr. Epstein to be housed alone in a cell just two weeks after he had been taken off suicide watch, a decision that also violated the jail’s normal procedure, two officials said.”

Sunday afternoon N.Y. Post update: “There’s no surveillance video of the incident during which Jeffrey Epstein apparently hanged himself in a federal lockup in Lower Manhattan, law-enforcement officials told The Post on Sunday.

“Although there are cameras in the 9 South wing where the convicted pedophile was being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, they are trained on the areas outside the cells and not inside, according to sources familiar with the setup there.”

On top of the simple, irrefutable “guns are cars” equation, Larry Wilmore brings it home:

"I'm not coming for your gun motherfucker. I'm coming for your weapon of mass destruction." On #LovettorLeaveIt, @larrywilmore talks about why we need to change the language we use when talking about guns. https://t.co/y8eUNQCYha pic.twitter.com/h1pgilPmXQ

— Crooked Media (@crookedmedia) August 11, 2019

Frank Capra‘s It Happened This Morning, as featured in the “Please, God” comment thread:

Children grooving to a violin, the shouting down of Moscow Mitch, or a guy catching a drone before it drowns?