The Hollywood Reporter‘s Leslie Felperin: “This making-of-a-star drama, set on the Isle of Wight, is old-fashioned and corny, and not in a good way. Flat and a bit pitchy.”
Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman: “Elle Fanning plays a British teen who enters a TV singing competition in a pop film that tries to give us a sugar high but is too cookie-cutter to soar.
“If Teen Spirit, however, wants to be a movie of the moment, the genre of indie fairy tale it belongs to is older to the point of being rather creaky. Scrape away the pop frosting and what’s underneath is basically one of those cookie-cutter Miramax ‘crowd-pleasers’ from the ’90s: a movie that’s formulaic in every detail but that passes off its particular cute brand of British Isles whimsy as a vaguely high-toned signifier of ‘authenticity.'”
Felperin quibble #1: “Fanning, reported to have done all her own singing live and not had it auto-tuned in post, has a good set of pipes, but it’s hard to see her competent but derivative musical stylings breaking out in a crowded marketplace.”
“The exhibition business” — i.e., cheap sugar-fizz highs delivering mass soul suffocation by way of increasingly tedious genre flicks and running-out-of-steam franchises — “came roaring back in 2018″…yes! Joy and rapture!
So proclaims a 12.26 Variety trend story by Brent Lang and Rebecca Rubin, titled “Movie Theaters Bounce Back: What’s Behind the 2018 Rebound.” Lang and Rubin’s feigned exuberance is about $11.5 billion worth of tickets having been sold over the last twelve months — a fact.
“After being written off in 2017 as creaky anachronisms that were being rapidly surpassed by more agile streaming players such as Netflix and Amazon, studios and theater owners are closing out the year in a much more optimistic frame of mind,” L & R declare.
Question: Why did moviegoers return to theaters in such great numbers over the last 12 months? Answer: If the right kind of gleaming, smart-assy, familiar-but-diverse, CG-fortified crap comes along, moviegoers will lap it up like seals. The key terms are “right kind.”
Poison choke quote: “It’s all about content,” said Jeff Goldstein, head of domestic distribution at Warner Bros. “There were movies audiences wanted to see.”
Uh-oh factor #1: “There are reasons to worry that the film business remains overly reliant on a handful of genres and franchises. Six of the top 10 highest-grossing domestic releases in 2018 were superhero pics and nine of the 10 most successful North American movies were sequels or spinoffs, hardly a triumph for originality. The only movie in the top 10 that wasn’t part of a pre-existing series was The Grinch, a venerable piece of intellectual property that has already inspired a Jim Carrey movie and a beloved television film with the voice of Boris Karloff.”
Uh-oh factor #2: “Some of these franchises are growing longer in the tooth. Many are now entering their second, third, or, in the case of Star Wars, their fourth decades.
21 out of 30 Gold Derby spitballers have Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born in their top position, and I think it’s time to bring out the big guns and the big buckets and say “hold on, wait a minute…don’t do this.” It’s time to beg all of those Academy members who care about the historical importance of the Oscars to pull back on the reins and go “whoa, nelly!” and ask themselves if they really want to give the Best Picture Oscar to a remake of a remake of a remake of a remake. Because that’s what they’re apparently on the verge of doing.
Now is the time for Academy and guild members to stop and take a hard look at things. The first half of Cooper’s film is very good, of course, and Cooper and Lady Gaga are better than pretty good, and even with the somewhat weaker second half (and you know ASIB has this problem, that it doesn’t deliver great cards and that the Bradley URINE TROUBLE, MISTER! downswirl scenes aren’t really believable, not in today’s reach-out realm)…yes, it’s still a better-than-decent film…and yes, Hollywood Elsewhere has been saying all along that it’s the best of the four versions of this age-old Hollywood saga (five if you count What Price Hollywood?).
But ask yourselves, “Is this who we are? Are we really going to give a Best Picture Oscar to the fifth version of a showbiz saga that dates back 85 years?”
Alternate lament: “Are we really going to give a Best Picture Oscar to a generally admirable, well-made film because it’s made $200 million? Wouldn’t that make us the People’s Choice Awards if we do that?”
Best Picture Oscar winners ought to be about the times from which they sprang — about whatever cares or currents or passions were stirring in the soup when they were written, made or released. Some kind of zeitgeist connection, some kind of “this is what life seemed to be like when we made this” element.
This representational belief system was shattered into pieces when Chicago won the Best Picture Oscar. Again with The Artist and The King’s Speech. Remember how terrible it felt the morning after these films won? Do you want to feel that feeling again?
I’m sorry but A Star Is Bornmust become a respected also-ran. If for no other reason than to rebuff that way-too-early, excessively smug prediction by Variety‘s Kris Tapley. Give the Best Picture Oscar to the obviously deserving Roma, to the socially transformative blockbuster Black Panther, to the perfectly finessed and emotionally affecting Green Book, to the witty and pointed The Favourite, to Can You Ever Forgive Me?…to anything but A Star Is Born.
Please, please, please think this over.
The Gold Derby gang knows nothing. They’re finger-to-the-wind cowards who are putting A Star is Born in their top position because it feels like an easy default — because they know no one anywhere will raise an eyebrow. The Gold Derby gang is all about going along with the current and avoiding taking a strong stand about anything.
Roma, Black Panther, Green Book, The Favourite…Roma, Black Panther, Green Book, The Favourite…Roma, Black Panther, Green Book, The Favourite. Choose one of these four and you’ll feel better about yourselves in the morning. Don’t tumble for A Star Is Born…please.
A 12.26 N.Y. Times story by Steve Eder doesn’t offer irrefutable proof that a Queens podiatrist got a 22 year-old Donald Trump got out of military service by writing a bogusletter to the draft board about Trump suffering from bone spurs, but it stronglysuggeststhis.
“A possible explanation involves a foot doctor in Queens who rented his office from Mr. Trump’s father, Fred C. Trump, and a suggestion that the diagnosis was granted as a courtesy to the elder Mr. Trump.
“The podiatrist, Dr. Larry Braunstein, died in 2007. But his daughters say their father often told the story of coming to the aid of a young Mr. Trump during the Vietnam War as afavortohisfather.
“’I know it was a favor,’ said one daughter, Dr. Elysa Braunstein, 56, who along with her sister, Sharon Kessel, 53, shared the family’s account for the first time publicly when contacted by The New York Times.
“Elysa Braunstein said the implication from her father was that Mr. Trump did not have a disqualifying foot ailment. ‘But did he examine him? I don’t know,’ she said.
Basic Vietnam-era realities for men of conscription age: Anybody who was able to weasel out of Vietnam service by any strategy, did so. Nobody thought twice about it. Volunteers like Oliver Stone aside, that war was mostly fought by blue-collar guys who didn’t have a scam or a strategy that would allow them to wiggle out. No late teen or 20something male with any kind of educated background wanted to fight in Vietnam. It was an evil war or at the very least a criminally misguided one. The full might of a superpower attempting to crush an agrarian nation — a peasant society just trying to rid itself of colonialists and imperialists — was appalling to anyone with a brain.
Young Donald Trump was just the fortunate son of a rich guy who got out through what sounds like fraudulent means, but everybody was trying to do the same thing.
I had one strong thought in my head after seeing On The Basis of Sex, a well-meaning but mediocre saga about the formative years of legendary Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Felicity Jones).
That thought was that Betsy West and Julie Cohen‘s RBG, the hit documentary about Ginsburg’s life and career, is a much better movie — smarter, more engrossing for sticking to the facts, no callow tricks or formulaic finessings. And yet it gets you emotionally.
On The Basis of Sex is a Ruth Bader Ginsburg primer for none-too-brights — a frequently unsubtle, Hollywood-style treatment that clumsily tries to milk or manipulate every emotional occurence or, failing that, charm the audience at every turn.
At every juncture the story seems to have been dumbed down to appeal to (what’s a tactful way of putting this?) viewers whose lips move at they read supermarket tabloids.
Clunky, on-the-nose dialogue. Rote direction. Cardboard characterizations. Over-acted, hamfisted performances, particularly by the sexist male villains. (Sam Waterston!) Trite plotting, predictable strategies and, in one climactic instance, the use of cliched dramatic invention that made me twitch and groan in my seat.
I strongly suspect that the Best Supporting Actor Oscar race is between Green Book‘s Mahershala Ali and Can You Ever Forgive Me‘s Richard E. Grant, and that Sam Elliott‘s stand-out performance in A Star Is Born…well, he’ll be nominated but that’s all.
Like all Oscar contenders Elliott has of course been getting a lot of media attention with career-highlight articles and whatnot. But his Wiki page pays almost no attention to his first half-decent theatrical feature — Daniel Petrie‘s Lifeguard, a 1976 character-driven story about aging and values — and in which Elliott gave his first semi-sturdy performance.
I saw Lifeguard when it first came out. It was obviously a low-budget beach movie (pre-Baywatch) that was partly green-lighted because of the bikinis, and was saddled with an occasionally clumsy, in-and-out script. But it also had a grounded, this-is-real, emotionally upfront quality, and was about the terror of hitting 30 with no clear idea of what to do with your life.
Elliott played Rick Carlson, a 30-year-old Los Angeles lifeguard (Elliott turned 32 in August ’76) who gets laid a lot. Rick begins to question his life when he reunites with Anne Archer‘s Cathy, an old girlfriend who’s now divorced with a young son. Sensing his beachside ennui, she urges Rick to to take a job as a Porsche salesman, which is being offered to him by another high-school classmate (Stephen Young).
Concurrently Rick is feeling a certain something or other for Wendy (Kathleen Quinlan, 21 at the time), a lonely teenager with a crush on him. Will Rick quit lifeguarding for a Porsche dealership gig? Will he hook up with Archer or relapse with the obviously-too-young Quinlan?
Variety review: “Lifeguard is an unsatisfying film, of uncertain focus on a 30-ish guy who doesn’t yet seem to know what he wants.” HE response: Wrong — it’s fairly satisfying. As for the main character not knowing which way to turn…yes, exactly!
Director David Frankel, writing six years ago in a N.Y. Times essay about Lifeguard:
“I remember Lifeguard all these years later, and that counts for something, doesn’t it? Isn’t that what art is, really? A work that makes you see the world differently, that answers questions you didn’t know you had, that perfectly captures a time and a place, that inspires you?
A couple of hours ago writer for hire, critic and feminist Monica Castillotweeted that her mom “chose Roma for tonight’s movie, so we’re finally watching it together.” Cool, but the screen shot she posted shows what appears to be a natural color image. So Roma is somehow being streamed in color by some entity…?
Five years ago Nebraska director AlexanderPaynetold Variety that he was “contractually obliged” to deliver a color version of Nebraska so Paramount wouldn’t lose money on certain markets that have color-only stipulations.
A full-color Roma is obviously not what Alfonso Cuaron prefers to show, but I have to admit my curiosity is aroused. I wouldn’t mind seeing a color version if one was available. I’ve seen the b & w version four times now. My eyes want what they want.
12.26, 10 am update: A journalist friend informs that following an interview with Cuaron he “point-blank asked if he had a color version of Roma, like Alexander Payne was forced to do with Nebraska for certain territories.” Journo pally “pointed out that Payne’s leaked out and wound up on EPIX much to his dismay. Cuaron 100% dismissed this, was horrified, and said absolutely NO color version of Roma exists or ever will. End of story.”
Few remember an old Herman’s Hermits song called “No Milk Today,” but indulge me. Toward the end of this 1966 tune, which is basically about a milkman feeling shattered because a woman he had an affair with has given him the brushoff, a chorus lyric goes as follows: “No milk today, my love has gone away / the bottle stands forlorn, a symbol of the dawn.”
All my life I’ve been hearing that last stanza as “the bottle stands forlorn, a symbol of the gore.”
All along I’ve been presuming that the lyricist (Graham Gouldman) was using “gore” to describe the aftermath of a love affair in the same vein of Bernie Taupin writing “love lies bleeding in my hands.”
On top of which “gore” is a much better rhyme with “forlorn” than “dawn” is.
Last night on twitter Chris McQuarrie was praising John McTiernan, Larry Gordon, Jeb Stuart, Stephen de Souzaand Joel Silver‘s Die Hard.
He was especially impressed about how this 1988 film “spends a whole reel — 22 minutes — on set-up before the shooting starts.” Few filmmakers “have the huevos” to do that, McQuarrie remarked.
Yeah, by today’s standards. But back in the ’80s and ’90s it was actually considered de rigueur for the inciting incident to kick off roughly around the 20-minute mark, and no later than 25 minutes. Nowadays you have to hook the ADD morons within the first five or ten minutes.
14 years ago Man on Fire director Tony Scott waited 45 minutes until the inciting incident (i.e., the kidnapping of Dakota Fanning). 45 minutes spent on character and set-up!
The only way to endure a window seat on a long coast-to-coast flight is to submit to a kind of meditation. You have to slip into a Zen hibernation state. You have shut off those parts of yourself that want to get up and stretch or cross your legs or anything in that realm. You have to focus on writing and reading, and if you do a really deep drill that awful sense of suffocation and imprisonment will slowly go away.
For me watching mediocre films — 95% of the movie menu on this fight is pure fizz — seems to make the flight go more slowly.
Thank God there are only 90 minutes left, give or take. Right now we’re passing over western Colorado. Estimated LAX touchdown around 1:55 pm or so. Add another 30 to 40 minutes for runway taxi time plus the always interminable fuselage disembarking plus the luggage carousel.
My recollections are a little fuzzy. Critics generally liked it. Mostly I remember the novelty of Steve Martin playing a smooth-talking bad guy. I recall that the first third or even the first half are highly intriguing, and then it kind of runs out of gas during the second half. I racked my brain but couldn’t recall any specific problems — just a vague sense of attrition. I know it always means something when you can’t recall much in the way of plot specifics, much less how a film ends.
So I read the fairly detailed Wikipedia synopsis and it still didn’t come back to me. So I’ve decided to watch it again. Tomorrow or the next day, I mean. Right now I’m stuck on a hellish, soul-suffocating N.Y.-to-L.A. flight, and of course the wifi isn’t strong enough to stream movies with. (It’s so shitty that I can’t even upload an image to the right folder on my server.)
The Spanish Prisoner is a dry, rather droll white-collar con movie. Everyone in the cast is a smooth villain (Martin, Ben Gazzara, Rebecca Pidgeon, the late Ricky Jay, Felicity Huffman). Campbell Scott, the creator of some kind of valuable financial “process” (blah McGuffin), is the increasingly frazzled mark.
This opens up something new for HE list queens — films that drop the ball during their second halves or third acts but are terrifically entertaining during their first 33% to 50%. Some of these films are so great during their first halves that I don’t even mind that they fumble it later on.
I love this Roger Ebert observation: “[Mamet’s] characters often speak as if they’re wary of the world, afraid of being misquoted, reluctant to say what’s on their minds: As a protective shield, they fall into precise legalisms, invoking old sayings as if they’re magic charms.”
..that I’m about to endure a six and a half hour Alaskan Airlines fight from Newark to Los Angeles. Every seat occupied, tight fit, possible filing during flight if I’m willing to pay astronnomical connection fee, etc. 2:30 pm arrival.
