Four years ago I made a case for 1971 being one of the best movie years of all time. In June ’07 I presented a similar argument for 1962, which is easily at par with 1939. One could make an equally strong case for 2007. All to say that 1999 films, great and nourishing as they always will be, have been a tad overhyped over the last decade or so.

Brian Raftery‘s “Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen” (which went on sale two days ago) is the latest example of this.

My 1999 roster — Election, The Matrix, Fight Club, American Beauty, The Limey, The Sixth Sense, Magnolia, The Straight Story, The Cradle Will Rock, Run Lola Run, Any Given Sunday, The Hurricane, Three Kings, The Insider, Being John Malkovich, The Thin Red Line, Eyes Wide Shut, The Blair Witch Project, October Sky, Abrej Los Ojos and The Lovers on the Bridge — comes to 21, which is obviously stellar and significant.

But there are 25 films on my 2007 list — American Gangster, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, No Country for Old Men, Once, Superbad, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, Things We Lost in the Fire, Zodiac, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, I’m Not There, Sicko, Eastern Promises, The Bourne Ultimatum, Control, The Orphanage, 28 Weeks Later, In The Valley of Elah, Ratatouille, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Darjeeling Limited, Knocked Up and Sweeney Todd. Just as strong as ’99, and perhaps a touch better.

The pauses in this scene — the moments when De Niro just stares at Keitel with an expression that’s somewhere between morally appalled and oddly perplexed — are what make it interesting. Sometimes vague detections of what’s inside of a character are more gripping than watching that character let it all out. This plus the spiky flattop, checked shirt, white T-shirt, jeans and spit-shined brown leather boots.

If and when the 2020 Presidential race is between Donald Trump and Pete Buttigieg, homophobic jibes and smears will be liberally used. We know this — we know who and what Trump is. Two days ago on TMZ, Mayor Pete said he’s accustomed to being picked on, and that he’ll deal with it head-on before deftly changing the subject.

HE suggestion: BUDDHA-judge needs to grow his hair out a little bit — 1/2 inch, say. Right now it’s a little too crew-cutty, a little too Alfred El Neuman-y.

Last night I re-watched my Bluray of Jerzy Skolimowski‘s Moonlighting (’82) — a finely chiselled, dead brilliant drama about four Polish guys (led by Jeremy Irons‘ “Nowak”) renovating their boss’s London flat during the time of the Solidarity crackdown in Poland. Very matter of fact, very specific and situational but at the same time a political allegory that sticks the landing. As perfectly made as this kind of thing can be.

In a four-year-old riff I repeated the old saw about the world being divided into two camps — those who hear Moonlighting and think of Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd, and those who think of Skolimowski and Irons and Jenny Seagrove and that ending with those shopping carts crashing and sliding downhill.

There were 31 comments from the HE community; 27 were about how cool the TV show was. I rest my case.

Now I get it. In Showtime’s The Loudest Voice, Russell Crowe‘s performance as Fox News creator Roger Ailes is going to kill. It’s going to suck all the Ailes oxygen out of the room. Which is why the producers of Fair and Balanced (Lionsgate, 12.20) need to put their version of this sordid big-media tale in front of critics in Cannes and splash things up a bit. Otherwise they might feel like yesterday’s news or some kind of :what about us?” afterthought when F&B pops in theatres eight months from now. Lionsgate’s Ailes is played by John Lithgow.

All along I’ve been thinking that sooner or later, Democratic primary voters will realize that Joe Biden is not the guy to go mano e mano with Donald Trump in 2020 (too yesteryear, too gaffe-y, peaked in the ’90s and early aughts, pushing 80) and that Bernie Sanders (also pushing 80) had his big groundswell heyday in ’15 and ’16 and that it’s time for everyone to support an eyes-forward, here-and-now candidate like Mayor Pete, Beto O’Rourke or Kamala Harris.

Now, suddenly, I’m scared of what Bernie might do — of the trouble he might create. He’s got a lot of money, his supporters have been known to behave like lunatics, and he might really fuck things up.

From today’s N.Y. Times assessment by Jonathan Martin: “Some in the party still harbor anger over the 2016 race, when [Sanders] ran against Hilary Clinton, and his continuing resistance to becoming a Democrat. But his critics are chiefly motivated by a fear that nominating an avowed socialist would all but ensure Mr. Trump a second term.

HE interjection: Don’t Democrats remember how Sanders was rejected by black voters in the South in ’16?

Martin:”‘There’s a growing realization that Sanders could end up winning this thing, or certainly that he stays in so long that he damages the actual winner,’ said David Brock, the liberal organizer, who said he has had discussions with other operatives about an anti-Sanders campaign and believes it should commence ‘sooner rather than later.’

“The good news for Mr. Sanders’s foes is that his polling is down significantly in early-nominating states from 2016, he is viewed more negatively among Democrats than many of his top rivals, and he has already publicly vowed to support the party’s nominee if he falls short.”

This scene from Nicholas Meyer‘s Time After Time (’79), which I haven’t seen since it opened, is about a hotel-room conversation between the visionary writer and idealist H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) and John Leslie Stevenson aka Jack The Ripper (David Warner). Both have time-travelled to late ’70s San Francisco. One is a fish out of water, another belongs.

The scene is basically about editorializing — Meyer briefly stopping the narrative to remark upon the moral decline that permeates contemporary society.

Start this clip from the 1:35 mark:

Stevenson to Wells: “We don’t belong here? On the contrary, I belong here completely and utterly. I’m home. It’s you who doesn’t belong here. You, with your absurd notions of a perfect and harmonious society. Drivel. The world has caught up and surpassed me. Ninety years ago, I was a freak. Today, I’m an amateur.

“You go back. The future isn’t what you thought. It’s what I am. Do you know that you can purchase a rifle or a revolver? It’s legal.”

Where’s the reporting from Paris-based journalists about the skilled-labor outfits that had been hired to renovate or fortify Notre Dame, and whose employees were working in the cathedral attic and had quit an hour or so before the first alarm went off at 6:20 pm? It can’t be that difficult to discover this info and even the names of the workers who were in the attic in the late afternoon, and who most likely left some kind of flammable device or substance unattended. Or even a cigarette that hadn’t been properly extinguished. Thousands of Parisians still smoke like chimneys, workmen especially.

The world is stunned and devastated, and the guilty must be found and punished. If I were running things over there and my investigators had determined without the slightest doubt who did what and who exactly was to blame, I would feed their names to the press. I would see to their suffering. I would go Ving Rhames medieval on their ass.

An “industry source” has told Variety‘s Elsa Keslassy that if Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood “can’t make it” to the Cannes Film Festival, “Sony has another glamorous option for the competition: Greta Gerwig’s star-studded Little Women, which is also in post but could be ready in time for a Cannes premiere.”

A Sony-related source mentioning a Gerwig-for-Tarantino substitution indicates that a decision has probably already been made to not screen the Tarantino at the upcoming festival, which of course is heartbreaking. Just don’t fall for that “it’s not ready” crap.

About a week ago a director-actor friend passed along second-hand poop about Once Upon A Time In Hollywood having encountered “big problems in the edit room,” whatever that means. Forget this if you want. The plan all along has been to premiere it in Cannes, and if everyone suddenly develops cold feet, there’s only one likely reason — i.e., Sony is fearful of getting critically vivisected in Cannes so they’re figuring “why risk it?”

Little Women costars during filming (Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, et. al.)

What Tarantino fan…hell, what serious fan of cinema is going to feel even slightly placated by Gerwig’s Little Women, which is…what, the fourth version of Louisa May Alcott‘s 19th Century novel, counting the recent PBS-BBC version?

Keslassy #1: “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is still in post-production and might not be announced at Thursday’s news conference.” HE comment: Every film that has ever screened in Cannes since 1947 has been “in post-production” up until the very last minute so don’t tell me.

Keslassy #2: “[Tarantino] is eager to compete, numerous insiders close to the project told Variety, so a late entry to the selection could be possible. A May 21 berth for the film would seem fitting, as that would be the 25th anniversary of Pulp Fiction‘s world premiere on the Croisette.” HE comment: I believe that Tarantino is eager to compete and wants to celebrate, etc.

This morning I read about an upcoming, quality-aspiring, untitled Jennifer Lawrence film. With Scott Rudin producing, Lila Neugebauer (The Waverly Gallery) directing and a script by first-timer Elizabeth Sanders, it’s most likely one of those probing, adult-angled, upmarket things — the sort of project that stage directors are often drawn to and which tend to appeal to actresses going through a rough or fallow patch.

Lawrence has been at it for roughly a decade, or since her breakout performance in Winter’s Bone (’10). Two and a half years later she delivered a grand-slam, Oscar-winning performance in Silver Linings Playbook (’12), which became a sizable worldwide hit on its own steam. But during the six and a half years since that David O. Russell film opened at the Toronto Film Festival, nothing Lawrence has done has really matched it.

She costarred in two Russell follow-ups, American Hustle (’13) and Joy (’15). Hustle collected Oscar noms and earned $150 million domestic and Joy won at least some critical praise. But neither seemed to really connect in a primal, essential, lightning-bolt way. Not in my book, at least.

She costarred in Serena (’14), a ’30s era Susanne Bier film that everyone ignored, perhaps because they didn’t want to see Lawrence paired once again with SLP costar Bradley Cooper.

Lawrence upped her arthouse cred with a brave, go-for-broke lead performance in Darren Aronofsky‘s mother!, a controversial success d’estime that (be honest) a lot of people hated.

Last year she starred in the flat-out atrocious Red Sparrow, which stalled at $46 million domestic. In ’16 she costarred with Chris Pratt in the financially successful but grotesquely misconceived and in some quarters deeply despised Passengers.

The rest of her films have been franchise swill — four X-Men flicks (including the upcoming Dark Phoenix) and four Hunger Games installments.

The plight of a mainstream movie star is never an easy one, and nobody ever said that staying on top was easy, even for the profoundly talented. All I know is that my sense of Lawrence’s journey is that she peaked six and a half years ago (she won her Silver Linings Oscar in early ’13) and since then her arrows haven’t really been hitting the target. Okay, once or twice but certainly no bull’s eyes.

Then again Lawrence is young (her 30th birthday isn’t until 8.15.20) and can survive another few years of in-and-out, mezzo-mezzo career adventures. But sooner or later she needs to get lucky again.

Pete BUDDHA-judge “is a polyglot. He’s conversational in Spanish, Italian, Maltese, Arabic, Farsi and French, and taught himself to speak Norwegian. He also plays guitar and piano, and in 2013 performed with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra as a guest piano soloist.” — from Mayor Pete’s Wikipage.

« Au peuple de France je voudrais dire que la cathédrale Notre Dame, c’était comme un cadeau à l’espèce humaine. Nous partageons la douleur mais nous vous remercions aussi de ce cadeau à la civilisation. » @PeteButtigieg à @BFMTV
Et en français! 🇫🇷🇺🇸#NotreDame pic.twitter.com/0xbf5lGhYH

— Cédric Faiche (@cedricfaiche) April 15, 2019