Attended 11 am screening of Jodie Foster‘s Money Monster (no time for a review it’s reasonably decent for what it is) and then ran over to the 12:30 pm press luncheon for Woody Allen‘s Cafe Society at Nikki Beach — a gloriously pleasant and relaxing affair attended by Woody, Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, Vittorio Storaro, Blake Lively, Corey Stoll. Ran back for 2pm Money Monster press conference, which lasted about 50 minutes. There’s just enough time to load some Woody luncheon photos before 4:30 Salle Debussy screening of Ken Loach‘s I, Daniel Blake. Don’t even have time to insert captions…sorry.
Woody Allen‘s Cafe Society is an attractively composed period dramedy (a few laughs but hardly a torrent) that plays it mild and steady and familiar. But it’s a fine Woody hit-list thing with a compelling if familiar moral undertow. There’s no way anyone who’s even half-acquainted with the Allen realm is going to be disappointed. Is it a bust-out in the vein of Midnight in Paris? No, but it’ll do until the next one comes along. It’s fine, it’s good — just don’t expect any big surprises.
Set in Los Angeles and New York over a two-year period in the mid ’30s, Cafe Society is a romantic triangle piece mixed with a hard-knocks, get-tough saga. It’s witty more than funny, but it’s really great when the laughs land. How many good laughs does it have? Not more than 20 or 25. I laughed maybe 10 or 12 times but I didn’t mind because it’s not about hah-hah but about fuck-me.
It’s a romance-gone-wrong thing that deals with sadness, moral ambiguity, disappointment. It’s too mired in hurt to be called a light-touch thing, but it does kind of glide along in a way that lets you know nothing awful or grotesque will occur.
It’s the story of Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg), a young Jewish guy who comes out to Hollywood in 1936 to ask his hotshot agent uncle (Steve Carell) for a job, and who soon falls in love with Carell’s romantically entangled secretary Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), only to gradually discover that her admitted-to relationship is not with a “journalist”, as she tells Bobby, but with fucking Uncle Phil.
My Paris flight touched down this morning at 8:30 am. The Airbnb pad is at 27 rue Jacques Louvel-Tessier, which is just east of the Quai de Valmy (i.e., an extension of Canal St. Martin) and four or five blocks northeast of Place de la Republique. Except I can’t move in until 4 pm so I’ve been hanging at La Martine, a corner cafe at the corner of rue Dieu and Quai de Valmy. Three cappucinos so far. Blue skies, intoxicating warm air, slight breeze…pretty much a perfect day.
My English-speaking waitress (above) has a little bit of a Kristen Stewart thing going on..
There’s nothing wrong with remaking THX-1138. If I were George Lucas I’d feel honored and flattered. Sterile, robotic society without feeling or physical intimacy. Emotions outlawed, everyone wearing same white tunics. Nicholas Hoult and Kristen Stewart fall in love anyway, eventually have to run for it, etc. Executive produced by Ridley Scott, Equals is screening this week at the Tribeca Film Festival. popping on DirecTV on 5.26, following by select theatrical and VOD on 7.15.
I’ll say it again for the fourth time — 2016 is looking like a relatively weak year in terms of potential review-driven, award-calibre features, particularly those destined to open over the last three months (10.1 to 12.31). I’ve previously posted a raggedy rundown of the films that appear to have the horses to compete, but now that this list is set to post tomorrow morning in the new 2016 Oscar Balloon I’d like another appraisal about what’s missing, what needs to be discounted, etc.
Highest Expectations (in order of confidence or expectation): Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester-by-the-Sea [Best Actor nomination LOCK for Casey Affleck]; David Gordon Green‘s Stronger; Martin Scorsese‘s Silence; Steven Gaghan‘s Gold (Matthew McConaughey, Bryce Dallas Howard, Edgar Ramírez); Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk; Tom Ford‘s Nocturnal Animals; David Frankel’s Collateral Beauty (Will Smith, Keira Knightley, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Edward Norton); Clint Eastwood‘s Sully (Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney) (8)
Very Interesting, Slight Hedging of Bets (random order): John Hancock‘s The Founder (biopic of McDonald’s kingpin Ray Kroc); Charlie McDowell‘s The Discovery w/ Rooney Mara, Nicholas Hoult (a love story set one year after the existence of the afterlife is scientifically verified or a more thoughtful version of The Leftovers); Wim Wenders‘ Submergence (Alicia Vikander, James McAvoy); Woody Allen‘s 1930s period dramedy (Steve Carell, Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively); David Michod‘s War Machine; Jeff Nichols‘ Midnight Special; James Ponsoldt‘s The Circle (Tom Hanks, Emma Watson, John Boyega), Pablo Larrain‘s Jackie (Natalie Portman, Greta Gerwig, Peter Sarsgaard). (9)
Highly Refined Horror: Juan Antonio Bayona‘s A Monster Calls. (1)
For whatever reason, Woody Allen‘s distribution relationship with Sony Pictures Classics, which began a few years ago, has been interrupted by Amazon Studios. All North American rights, including theatrical and streaming, to Allen’s latest film, an untitled 1930s romantic dramedy with Steve Carell, Jesse Eisenberg, Blake Lively, Jeannie Berlin, Parker Posey, Kristen Stewart, Corey Stoll and Ken Stott, has been acquired by Amazon. Amazon will open the film theatrically sometime this summer, followed by a streaming debut several weeks later. Amazon isn’t fooling around. They’ve also acquired Kenneth Lonergan‘s Oscar-bound Manchester-By-The-Sea during the recently-concluded Sundance Film Festival. “Like all beginning relationships, there is much hope, mutual affection, and genuine goodwill — the lawsuits come later,” Allen said in a statement. Allen is also writing and directing an untitled six-episode television series for Amazon starring himself, Elaine May and Miley Cyrus. It begins shooting next month.
Cheers and salutations to The Playlist‘s Jessica Kiang and Oliver Lyttleton for having posted the most comprehensive list of 2016 films that I’ve seen anywhere. I’ve been updating my own 2016 rundown (the most recent re-edit appeared on 12.30) so I’ve isolated 31 of Kiang and Lyttleton’s titles that I’ve previously ignored. Several are intriguing; about half seem minor-ish or less than fully wowser but let’s not pre-judge. I’ve listed them in order of highest HE interest. All synopses written by Kiang/Lyttleton. A reposting of most recent 2016 summary follows:
The Salesman (d: Asghar Farhadi) Cast: Sahahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti. Synopsis: Two actors perform in Arthur Miller‘s Death Of A Salesman.
The Discovery (d: Charlie McDowell) Cast: Rooney Mara, Nicholas Hoult. Synopsis: A love story set a year after the existence of the afterlife has been scientifically proven.
American Pastoral (d: Ewan MacGregor). Cast: Ewan MacGregor, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Connelly, Uzo Aduba, Rupert Evans, Molly Parker, David Strathairn. Synopsis: Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Philip Roth, this is the story of Seymour “The Swede” Lvov, a successful businessman, former high-school sports star and scion of a Jewish upper-middle New Jersey family, whose life gradually disintegrates in the politically turbulent 1960s.
Loving (d: Jeff Nichols) Cast: Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Michael Shannon, Marton Csokas, Nick Kroll. Synopsis: The true story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple sentenced to prison in Virginia in 1958, and then exiled from the state for the crime of getting married, and their nine-year fight to be able to return home as a family.
Salt And Fire (d: Werner Herzog) Cast: Michael Shannon, Gael García Bernal, Werner Herzog, Veronica Ferres. Synopsis: Two men on opposite sides of a clash over an ecological issue in South America must put aside their differences and work together to avoid disaster when a nearby volcano presents eruption signals.
Julieta (d: Pedro Almodóvar). Cast: Emma Suárez, Adriana Ugarte, Inma Cuesta, Rossy de Palma, Nathalie Poza. Synopsis: The life of the titular woman, told between two time periods, 2015 and 1985.
Jackie (d: Pablo Larraín) Cast: Natalie Portman, Greta Gerwig, Peter Sarsgaard, John Hurt, Max Casella. Synopsis: The story of Jackie Kennedy in the first days following the assassination of JFK.
Certain Women (d: Kelly Reichardt) Cast: Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, Lily Gladstone, Jared Harris. Synopsis: The story of the intersecting lives of three women in present-day Montana.
The Neon Demon (d: Nicolas Winding Refn) Cast: Elle Fanning, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcoate, Keanu Reeves, Christina Hendricks. Synopsis: An up-and-coming model in Los Angeles becomes prey for a gang of beauty-obsessed peers who wish to drain her of her vitality and beauty.
20th Century Women (d: Mike Mills) Cast: Elle Fanning, Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, Alia Shawkat. Synopsis: A story of three generations of very different women living in 1970’s Santa Barbara.
It hit me the other day that the award-season argument factor isn’t as strong this year as it has been in the past. Everyone seems to be adopting a comme ci comme ca attitude. Nobody seems to be cranked up about anything. There’s certainly nothing this year to equal, say, the sharp aesthetic divide between The Social Network advocates and the soft saps who fell for The King’s Speech. There’s no conservative vs. liberal social values clash as exemplified by Crash vs. Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture. There’s certainly nothing to match the revulsion that some of us felt about The Artist or Chicago winning their respective Best Picture Oscars. There have been no serious take-down campaigns except for the one against Truth.
I’m not saying the season is entirely lacking in emotionalism, but that the bonfires aren’t burning as brightly as before. The 2015/16 season has been characterized by a series of small brush fires. What has stood out is the lack of real feeling about anything or anyone.
There have been, however, unexpected responses to films that many had presumed would at least score a nomination or two, or to films and performances that really had no business being nominated or awarded. Here’s how it tallies from this end:
(1) The late-inning resurgence of George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road as a strong Best Picture contender, which was driven almost totally by critics group awards and not very much, it seemed, by Warner Bros. advertising and promo pushes. Emotional furnace level: 7.5.
(2) The curious but strangely passionate insistence by fans of The Martian that it deserves a Best Picture nomination. Make no mistake — this Ridley Scott effort is a highly intelligent, perfectly satisfying popcorn movie about a community of space agency types pooling resources to rescue a nice resourceful guy who’s stranded on Mars. There’s certainly nothing wrong with it. It’s totally fine. But Best Picture-nominating a film for simply being “likable” and/or selling a lot of tickets degrades the brand. Especially when its own distributor has encouraged its Golden Globes/HFPA classification as a “comedy.” Emotional furnace level: 6.
(3) The shameful dismissal of Love & Mercy as Best Picture contender by the blogaroonies for the reprehensible reason that it didn’t open during Oscar season and therefore didn’t really count. (Rationale: It doesn’t matter if their bread is sufficiently buttered with parties and ad buys — the movie HAS to open after Labor Day or it’s a no-go.) Ditto the corresponding under-support for Paul Dano, whose performance as young Brian Wilson was easily one of the year’s finest in whatever category (Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor). Philistines! Emotional furnace level: 9.
The National Society of Film Critics, a respected 53-member organization, has given its Best Picture award to Tom McCarthy‘s Spotlight. Their Best screenplay award also went to Spotlight, which was co-written by McCarthy and Josh Singer. Totally approved, no arguments, adding to the general consensus, etc.
The NSFC’s Best Director award went to Carol‘s Todd Haynes.
And yet they also gave their Best Actor award to Creed‘s Michael B. Jordan — clearly a pushback against Leonardo DiCaprio‘s award-season Revenant narrative (i.e., “he suffered, he froze, he ate a buffalo liver”) and just as clearly some kind of joke as no one anywhere has seriously spoken of Jordan’s decent-enough performance as being award-level…c’mon!
The NSFC did very well, however, by handing their Best Actress award to 45 Years costar Charlotte Rampling. Thumbs all the way up on this one. Plus anything that might slow down the momentum of Room‘s Brie Larson is, I feel, a good thing. She’s going to be nominated, of course, but that scene in which she freaks out after seeing her son safe in the back seat of a police car is an absolute disqualification.
Naturally the NSFC gave their Best Supporting Actor award to Mark Rylance for his skillfully subtle, bordering-on-somnambulant performance as Russian spy Rudolf Abel in Steven Spielberg‘s Bridge of Spies. Rylance is the safe default choice this year for critics who take comfort in voting exactly as they’ve been told by other lazy consensus followers.
With the exception of curious oddities like The Artist or jackpot favorites like Return of the King or Slumdog Millionaire, Best Picture Oscar winners tend to deliver some kind of capturing or vacuuming of the American current — a piece of the culture, the experience, the heartbeat, the anxieties, the hustle, the broken dream. Spotlight, American Beauty, The Hurt Locker, Crash, Million Dollar Baby, No Country for Old Men, The Departed, A Beautiful Mind — all of these films have flirted with this general element, as did many of their competitors (The Social Network, Brokeback Mountain, Traffic, In The Bedroom, Sideways, Capote, Michael Clayton). So which 2016 films fit this profile? Which appear to have the basic ingredients (at least aspirationally) of a Best Picture winner?
Damn few, and possibly fewer than that. I don’t know anything (who does?) but I have a fairly good nose for this stuff, and right now I can’t smell any films on the 2016 slate with any kind of serious Best Picture jangle. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it agin — 2016 looks and feels weak.
Two days ago I posted my latest 2016 roster riff (“Likely 2016 Quality Contenders: Second Pass”). I’ve refined it since and re-classified a few films on the list, but boil it all down and there seem to be only four or five films that fit HE’s Best Picture paradigm, at best, and not even these when you think twice about them — David Gordon Green‘s Stronger (real-life guy’s recovery from the Boston marathon bombing tragedy), Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, John Hancock‘s The Founder (biopic of McDonald’s kingpin Ray Kroc), Jodie Foster‘s Money Monster (political thriller) and Gary Ross‘s Free State of Jones (historical race-card drama).
Uh-Oh Factors: (a) David Gordon Green doesn’t do Oscar-friendly (anyone see Our Brand Is Crisis?), (b) Ang Lee might be slightly out of his depth with the downish-sounding Billy Lynn’s Halftime Walk, (c) the story of Ray Kroc sounds a little ho-hummy and predictable, (d) the basic plot driver in Money Monster (financial TV personality is held hostage by a viewer who lost all of his money after following a bad tip) sounds tight and confining, and (e) Ross has made a couple of decent mid-range social dramas (Seabiscuit, Pleasantville) but he’s not & never will be an award-season power hitter; plus he has a lifetime demerit for directing the first Hunger Games.
Just over two weeks ago I posted HE’s first 2016 quality-film roster riff. My initial impression was that ’16 seemed light on the kind of films I prefer (i.e., smart, crafty, subtle, undercurrents, made for people with at least a high-school education and/or voracious readers). Now I’m realizing things are better than that. I’ll do a third pass in late January. What am I overlooking or mis-ranking? 22 films looking good to very good. Again, Wikipedia’s 2016 film roster + my recent Sundance ’16 preference list plus the following:
Highest Expectations (random order): David Gordon Green‘s Stronger; Martin Scorsese‘s Silence; Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk; Tom Ford‘s Nocturnal Animals. (4)
Genre Unto Themselves: Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Hail Caesar! (dry knucklehead period comedy) (1)
Beware of Highly Budgeted Asian Action Fantasy “Blockbuster”: Zhang Yimou‘s The Great Wall (1).
Very Interesting, Slight Hedging of Bets (random order): John Hancock‘s The Founder (biopic of McDonald’s kingpin Ray Kroc; Jodie Foster‘s Money Monster (political thriller); Woody Allen‘s 1930s period film (Steve Carell, Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively); Damien Chazelle‘s La La Land; Robert Eggers‘ The Witch; David Michod‘s War Machine; Richard Linklater‘s Everybody Wants Some. (7)
I do the same kind of easy-default Sundance Film Festival spitballing every December. I checkmark the titles, directors and actors I know or trust on some level and work outward from there. Per longstanding tradition, I’ll be able to see around 20 to 25 films during my nine days in Park City, depending on stamina and whatnot. (The festival runs from 1.21 to 1.31.) I’m naturally looking for tips from anyone who knows anything about potentially cool obscuros. So here goes with the boldfacing primes vs. shoulder-shruggers — so far I’ve got 20 prime titles, and that’s not including any Dramatic Competition titles:
PRIME PREMIERES:
Ali & Nino / United Kingdom (Director: Asif Kapadia, Screenwriter: Christopher Hampton) — Muslim prince Ali and Georgian aristocrat Nino have grown up in the Russian province of Azerbaijan. Their tragic love story sees the outbreak of the First World War and the world’s struggle for Baku’s oil. Ultimately they must choose to fight for their country’s independence or for each other. Cast: Adam Bakri, Maria Valverde, Mandy Patinkin, Connie Nielsen, Riccardo Scamarcio, Homayoun Ershadi. World Premiere.
Certain Women / U.S.A. (Director: Kelly Reichardt, Screenwriter: Kelly Reichardt based on stories by Maile Meloy) — The lives of three woman intersect in small-town America, where each is imperfectly blazing a trail. Cast: Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, James Le Gros, Jared Harris, Lily Gladstone. World Premiere.
Complete Unknown / U.S.A. (Director: Joshua Marston, Screenwriters: Joshua Marston, Julian Sheppard) — When Tom and his wife host a dinner party to celebrate his birthday, one of their friends brings a date named Alice. Tom is convinced he knows her, but she’s going by a different name and a different biography—and she’s not acknowledging that she knows him. Cast: Rachel Weisz, Michael Shannon, Kathy Bates, Danny Glover. World Premiere.
Frank & Lola / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Matthew Ross) — A psychosexual noir love story—set in Las Vegas and Paris—about love, obsession, sex, betrayal, revenge and, ultimately, the search for redemption. Cast: Michael Shannon, Imogen Poots, Michael Nyqvist, Justin Long, Emmanuelle Devos, Rosanna Arquette. World Premiere.
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