In a just-posted open letter to Robert “leave me alone” Mueller in the N.Y. Times, Robert DeNiro (who’s been playing Mueller on SNL for several months) begs him to stop behaving like a loyal (i.e., not overly confrontational) Republican and stand up for America. A significant portion of the public is too lazy and mind-scattered to read the Mueller Report, DeNiro has written, but if straight-arrow Mueller is able to man up and explain his findings (and, perhaps more importantly, convey his fully-considered beliefs about the character of Donald Trump) he’ll be doing this once-great nation of ours a favor.

I’m getting an Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close vibe from this trailer for John Crowley‘s The Goldfinch (Warner Bros., 9.13). I tend to have difficulty with trauma-recovery dramas, especially those involving terrorism. And I have to be honest — I don’t like sensitive little boys who wear glasses. I’m just saying.

Based on Donna Tartt’s 2013 novel, and set for release during the Toronto Film Festival. Ansel Elgort, Oakes Fegley, Aneurin Barnard, Finn Wolfhard, Sarah Paulson, Luke Wilson, Jeffrey Wright, Nicole Kidman. The semi-official description is a “coming-of-age, character-driven drama,” but that’s obviously too vague.

From Michael Lasky‘s N.Y. Times op-ed piece, “Mueller Is Admirably Apolitical. That’s the Problem“: “I think we know what Robert Mueller must think of Donald Trump. And yet Mueller will not say so publicly.

“He just reiterates that he wants the evidence to speak for itself. The evidence, however, was not allowed to speak for itself, as he knows. The attorney general spoke for it. And many Republican members of Congress apparently didn’t even read the evidence. The president of the United States mocks it and lies about it, saying the report found no evidence of obstruction.

“And so we are living in a clash of Robert Mueller’s two Americas. In the America in which he grew up, and the America he has served with rectitude and dignity, riding quietly off into the sunset would perhaps have been the right thing to do.

“But that America is no longer. Shards of it remain, but it is under constant assault. If Mr. Mueller wishes to serve and preserve that America, he might still ask himself whether this brief statement followed by silence is the best way to do that.”

Seven years ago I admitted in this column that for the first and last time in my journalistic career (in other words once) I conducted a longish, highly detailed phone interview with Francis Coppola while buzzing on a mild quaalude high.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

A couple of days ago I half-lamented and half-predicted that very few critics would have the balls to even mention the fact that the reptilian star of Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a big-bellied, roly-poly fella.

The reason, I explained, is that in today’s French terror culture noting that this or that character is corpulent would be immediately suspected as a form of fat-shaming, which these days is regarded in the same light as racism or homophobia. So the safe thing, Godzilla-wise, is to keep quiet lest you be carted off to the Place d’Concorde.

I’ve just spent a couple of arduous hours sifting through 20 or 25 reviews of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and can report that almost everyone has indeed sidestepped the Fatzilla factor.

Only two critics have exhibited cast-iron cojones in this regard — Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman and N.Y. Times critic Glenn Kenny.

Gleiberman: “Is it my imagination, or does it look like Godzilla has been hitting the dessert cart? I’m not merely speaking about his distended belly. The creature has been designed so that his head and neck, which used to resemble the top of the letter f, now sort of melt right into his torso. As a result, his face no longer pops in the same vivid anthropomorphic way. And that’s a miscalculation. If Godzilla looks a little chunkier than before, so be it, but you don’t want to watch a Godzilla movie thinking that his personality is slightly out of focus — that he’s not quite the same dude.”

Kenny: “As in the 2014 film, this Godzilla is a stouter fellow than we have seen in previous incarnations. While underwater, he resembles a giant electric eel with bourbon bloat.”

National Review critic Kyle Smith seemed to indicate agreement or at least amusement when he riffed early this morning about my Fatzilla thing.

Toronto Globe and Mail critic Barry Hertz seemingly went in the opposite direction, proclaiming that “the creature design is superb.”

The following critics have bypassed the obvious (i.e., chickened out): Time Out‘s Josh Rothkopf, TheWrap‘s Alonso Duralde, CNN’s Brian Lowry, the Empire guy, the Uproxx guy, the South China Morning Post‘s James Mottram.

Even N.Y. Post critic Johnny Oleksinki, who normally just blurts out whatever he’s thinking, played it carefully this time.

Nobody wanted to see John and Mary 50 years ago, and nobody except for those with a curious, Larry Karaszewski-like appreciation for oddly inert ’60s misfires will see it today.

The only way to catch this Peter Yates film is via YouTube [after the jump] or on a 12 year-old DVD.

That Time cover conveyed a very simple message: “You probably don’t want to see this film because you can tell at a glance that Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow don’t belong together…one look tells you they were paid to do this.” The trailer adds to this impression and then some.

Plus Farrow is red-haired and freckly-faced in the film but blonde and creamy-skinned on the Time cover. It all feels pushed, unnatural, lacking in urgency. In a word, inconsequential.

Consider these two clips of Francis Coppola. The first [starting at the 59-second mark] was shot by his wife Eleanor during the 1976 Philippine shoot of Apocalypse Now, when Coppola was 37 or 38. The second [after the jump] is a portion of last month’s Tribeca Film Festival discussion between an 80 year-old Coppola and director Steven Soderbergh, following the debut of Apocalypse Now: Final Cut.

One can’t help but note the stark differences — the aggressive energy and hyper-judgmental focus that Coppola had 42 years ago vs. the wiser, calmer, more long-viewish Coppola who intends to finally start shooting Megalopolis later this year or certainly by 2020.

The clips remind us that the combination of hunger, ambition and brash nerve are probably more vital when it comes to making a strong film than the application of seasoned wisdom and last-lap reflection. Directing is a young or middle-aged-man’s game. I’m not saying you can’t hang in there and deliver in your 60s, ’70s or ’80s, but by and large directors make their best films between their late 20s and mid 50s. Why? Because they’re more dogged, tenacious and determined during those decades.

The odds may seem lopsided in next year’s Godzilla vs Kong flick, but co-screenwriter Michael Dougherty (director of the just-opening Godzilla: King of the Monsters) says it’ll be a good “David vs. Goliath situation” with Kong becoming the clever, resourceful underdog.

“Because everyone, the moment you say Godzilla’s going to fight Kong, your first reaction is Kong doesn’t stand a chance,” Dougherty recently said. “But if you really take the time to look at Kong as a character, it’s like, okay, in Skull Island he was an adolescent, so he was still growing. So who knows how big he is since the 1970s, when they first met him?”

So the Skull Island Kong was a kid, a sixth-grader, a big-ape version of a 12 or 13 year-old? He was a mid-sized office building, for Chrissake — at least triple the size of Peter Jackson‘s 2005 version, the Dino de Laurentiis Kong of 1976 or the 1933 original from Merian C. Cooper and Willis O’Brien, all of whom were roughly 30 feet tall. (Whereas the light gray Son of Kong beast was only about 15 feet tall.)

Wikipedia says the Skull Island Kong was 104 feet tall. And for the 2020 version he’s going to…what, double that?

I’m not buying the “different Kongs for different folks” rationale. King Kong is a vital, organic element in the psyche of 20th Century America, and you can’t swoop in and super-size him in order to make a profit. Well, you can but you’re the devil. The recent super-sized Kong hybrids come from the minds of greedy phonies, corporatists, non-believers, film-flammers, delusionals. Yes, I’m speaking of Dougherty and his Godzilla vs. Kong co-conspirators (director Adam Wingard, producer Mary Parent, co-screenwriter Terry Rossio).

Why did this Scott Mantz-in-Liverpool Facebook photo weird me out like it did? (He’s attending Universal’s press junket for Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis‘s Yesterday, which opens in late June.) I guess it’s because I’m not accustomed to thinking of the Beatles as a quartet of 475-pound, Richard Kiel-sized giants. Plus they just look weird alongside Little Mantz. Tribute statues can be larger than life if they’re elevated a few feet off the ground on a marble or iron pedestal, but if they’re planted alongside pedestrians they should be life-sized. As in “yeah, it’s us but we’re no different than anyone else.” Except creatively, that is, and to some extent spiritually, I suppose. The Beatles were/are mythic figures who cast a giant shadow, but this is a crude way of putting it.

A week ago I conveyed a certain muted respect for Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne‘s Young Ahmed. I described it fairly and accurately an “an 84-minute waiting-game movie about a young Islamic psychopath and would-be Jihadist (Idir Ben Addi) planning to murder his female teacher out of blind adherence to Islamic derangement syndrome.”

Everyone understands that in a European or U.S.-made drama (or comedy even) there’s only one reason to introduce a character with strong Islamic beliefs — i.e., to start the clock ticking on whether or not this character will commit some act of ghastly terror.

This is exactly what the Dardennes have done with Young Ahmed, which should probably be re-titled Young Islamic Asshole and subtitled Just For Laughs, How About Killing Yourself Without Taking Any Innocent Victims With You?Which is why it’s a “waiting game” film because all you can think about is “who is this kid going to kill, and will somebody kill him before he strikes?”

Except Young Ahmed ends rather profoundly. The last couple of minutes are so good, in fact, that I wound up forgiving the first 80 or so.

How good is Ahmed on a Dardennes scale? I would give it a 7.5. It’s certainly better than their last one, The Unknown Girl, which I called C.S.I: Liege. I would call Ahmed a “good but calm down”-er. Dialogue, dialogue. MCU interiors, MCU interiors. It certainly warrants respect but minus any post-screening cartwheels.

Except Jordan Ruimy‘s Cannes-whisperer is now confiding that The Young Ahmed was thisclose to winning the Palme d’Or. Then Bong Joon–ho‘s Parasite came along and the Alejandro G. Inarritu-led jury was so impressed that they decided to split the difference, giving the Palme to Parasite and the Best Director prize to the Dardennes brothers.

The red-pinkish caramel skies are my excuse for posting a touristy Arc de Triomphe photo. Although I’ve been coming here since the ’70s, last night was my first time ascending the monument’s circular metal staircase (my lungs and leg muscles were fine until the very end of the climb) and then finally standing on top and gazing all over, the late-night breezes gently slapping my face.