Big-time, been-around director to HE (received yesterday): “Green Book — hard to beat. And Bohemian Rhapsody severely underrated by critics.”

So Steve McQueen’s Widows underperformed last weekend. On 11.15 The Hollywood Reporter‘s Pamela McClintock wrote that Widows was “tracking to bring in between $12 million and $18 million in its domestic launch.” It wound up making $12.3 million in 2803 theatres for a per-screen average of $4388, or something close to that. If it earns triple that amount in domestic theatres it’ll wind up with $37 million and change. It cost $42 million to make, not to mention the marketing.

I’ve said a few times that Widows is one of the best heist films I’ve ever seen and that Viola Davis delivers an award-calibre performance. But those numbers are disappointing. Who saw it last weekend, and what was the takeaway?

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy and I spoke for roughly an hour earlier today. Otto Bathurst‘s Robin Hood. (That’s what we’re talking about as the mp3 begins.) The attack upon poor Green Book by p.c. assassins (i.e., “How dare Peter Farrelly make a compassionate, racially-themed period film about a road saga that actually happened! He’s allowed to make racial-commentary films that reflect the politically correct current of 2018, and that’s all! 1962 is out!”). We also discussed the death of Steve McQueen‘s Widows, the views about Netflix and Roma, Ben Stiller‘s Escape at Dannemora, the Best Actress race (Ruimy thinks it’s basically Lady Gaga vs. Glenn Close) and Melissa McCarthy in particular. Again, the mp3.

In an 11.19 Criterion essay on Some Like It Hot, Sam Wasson writes that director-cowriter Billy Wilder had relatively simple things on his mind. “[He] thought cross-dressing was funny. He thought Americans, dizzy in the rat race, were funny.” Like when Tony Curtis says to Jack Lemmon, “You’re a guy, and why would a guy want to marry a guy? and Lemmon answers “Security.”

“That’s Wilder capitalism speaking,” says Wasson. “Not love or lust or even man or woman.”

But then Wasson screws up. “Some Like It Hot isn’t Tootsie,” he declares. “It’s not interested in how the experience of being a woman can make men better men.” Nope — exactly wrong.

Curtis’s Joe is a rake and a cad — a “love ’em and leave ’em” type, a nookie hound, literally the kind of guy who might borrow money from a girlfriend in order to bet on horses.

Then, dressed as “Josephine”, he meets Marilyn Monroe‘s Sugar Kowalczyk on the train, and she tells him about her run of bad boyfriends, and how one threw cole slaw in her face and left her with a squeezed-out tube of toothpaste.

Undaunted, a couple of days later Joe cons Sugar into falling for him by pretending to be an oil millionaire (i.e., “Junior”). Another notch on the bedpost.

But when Joe and Jack Lemmon‘s Jerry are forced to lam it (Spats Columbo!), Joe feels badly about lowering the boom. He gives Sugar the diamond bracelet that Joe E. Browne‘s Osgood had given to “Daphne.” A couple of hours later Joe (dressed as Josephine) sees Sugar singing “I’m Through With Love” on the bandstand, and the guilt sinks in. Wilder’s camera holds a very long shot of Curtis feeling quite badly about breaking Sugar’s heart. So badly that he risks his life by walking up on stage and kissing her goodbye.

Saxophone Joe would’ve never risked his neck for a dame, but “Josephine” does. After playing the field and treating women like shit he’s seen “how the other half lives,” and becomes, you’d better believe, a better man for that.

HE to Wasson: Sydney Pollack got the above-referenced idea for Tootsie from Some Like It Hot.

In The Front Runner, Hugh Jackman‘s Gary Hart is a smart, decent, amiable politician whose life suddenly blows up. He gets walloped by the news media over a private matter, and he just can’t believe it. He can’t accept that reporters would want to make hay over indications that he might have been intimate with someone other than his wife.

Are you shitting me? Who cares? What the hell does that have to do with being President?

Hart gets indignant — his back arches — but he gradually slumps. He turns stern and despondent, solemn and anguished. It’s painful to accept the death of a dream, but that’s what Hart was forced to do in the space of two or three days. His life and career were in tatters, and over relatively nothing. A high hard one and a willing recipient…pheh!

And Jackman takes you through this. Peak to crevasse. Don’t kid yourself — it’s one of the best performances of the year. I’ve been saying this all along.

Last night Jackman received the Kirk Douglas Award Excellence in Film award from the Santa Barbara Film Festival, or more precisely from Roger “Nick the Greek” Durling, who knows how to pick ’em. Joining in the celebration were J.K. Simmons, Front Runner director Jason Reitman and longtime friend Ben Mendelsohn.

Jackman began by saying that “the best part about this evening not being televised, [is that] there’s no music to rush me off the stage. I’m going to do everything wrong in speechmaking. This is going to be long and I’m going to thank everyone. Just warning you.”

So far Otto Bathurst‘s Robin Hood (Lionsgate, 11.21) has a 33% Metascore. The critics are sounding a warning. They’re saying “don’t see it…it’s rancid…you’ll get indigestion…see Green Book instead,” etc.

“So from the evidence it must be assumed this film has forsworn, and arguably sneered at, the sort of delight that has heretofore been associated with Robin Hood and his brethren onscreen, all the way from Douglas Fairbanks 96 years ago to Errol Flynn, Sean Connery, Kevin Costner and even Mel Brooks along with many, many others (perhaps not so much a paunchy Russell Crowe a few seasons back).

“The only way to read this kind of arrogant dismissal of past pleasures is that the current filmmakers think they know better, that kids today want something fast and furious and senseless and don’t care about the old jolly-but-musty stuff. This may be true to a certain extent, but it doesn’t prevent the public from smelling a rat when it really and truly is stinking up the joint.” — from Todd McCarthy‘s Hollywood Reporter 11.20 review.

Steven Knight‘s Serenity (Aviron, 1.30) seems like a January release, all right — James M. Cain meets Body Heat meets Matthew McConaughey‘s Jimmy Buffet character, operating a boat on a Caribbean island called Plymouth (**). It feels like sexy trash — diverting if semi-disposable. At the same I’m intrigued by anything from Knight, who wrote the respected Eastern Promises; he also directed and wrote the masterful Locke.

I’ll always have a problem with McConaughey’s southern drawl. I can never completely understand what he’s saying, and the only solution, it seems, is to watch him with subtitles. Plus he’s starting to look his age — his pretty-boy aura is slipping away.

(**) Pic was actually shot east of Madagasgar, on an Indian Ocean “island nation” called Mauritius.

Here’s the final 35 in HE’s (actually the IMDB‘s) list of adult-friendly, quality-aspiring 2019 films — possible critical faves and perhaps even award-season contenders. I’m not 100% certain that each and every film is a 2019 release, but they certainly seem to be. It’s a process of honing, refining…getting to the truth.

Later today I’ll post the whole list of 97, but broken down into categories — top 25 HE hotties, possible award-season contenders, indie-woke-Sundance-Spirits-Gotham (aka inspirational, identity politics, intrepid p.c. heroes), and generally aspirational. Reminder: This list contains no submental jizz-whizzers (CG-driven, comic-book, sequels, horror).

Here’s the initial roster of 31 (posted on 11.18), and the follow-up slate, also numbering 31 (11.19)

63. Deston Daniel Cretton‘s Just Mercy — Attorney Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) defends Walter McMillan (Jamie Foxx), a man unjustly imprisoned for murder. Based on Stephenson’s memoir. (Jordan, Foxx, Brie Larson, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Tim Blake Nelson, Rob Morgan)

64. Jay Roach‘s Fair and Balanced — Fox honcho Roger Ailes and sexual harassment allegations that resulted in his resignation. (Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Allison Janney, Kate McKinnon, Malcolm McDowell, Mark Duplass)

65. Terrence Malick‘s Radegund — Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian conscientious objector, refuses to fight for the Third Reich in World War II and is executed in 1943. Shot in late summer of 2016. (August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, Michael Nyqvist, Jürgen Prochnow, Matthias Schoenaerts, Bruno Ganz)

66. Rod Lurie‘s The Outpost — Abut the 2013 Battle of Kamdesh in which Taliban forces attacked a U.S. outpost. The result of the battle was a pyrrhic victory as most the the outpost was destroyed and 8 Americans were killed and 27 were wounded but Taliban forces retreated due to heavy casualties. Over 150 Taliban fighters were killed during the battle. Staff Sergeant Clinton Romesha (Scott Eastwood) and Staff Sergeant Ty Carter (Caleb Landry Jones) were both awarded the Medal of Honor in 2013 for courageous actions. Orlando Bloom also stars.

67. Darius Marder‘s Sound of Metal — (Olivia Cooke, Riz Ahmed, Mathieu Amalric, Arthur Hiou)

68. Fernando Meirelles‘ The Pope — Opposing visions between two of the most powerful leaders in the Catholic Church, both of whom must address their own pasts and the demands of the modern world in order to move the church forward. (Juan Minujín, Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Pryce, Matthew T. Reynolds)

69. Casey Affleck‘s Light of My Life — A father and his young daughter find themselves trapped in the woods. Also written by Affleck. (Casey Affleck, Elisabeth Moss, Tom Bower, Timothy Webber)

70. Robin Bissell‘s The Best of Enemies — Civil rights activist Ann Atwater faces off against C.P. Ellis, Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, in 1971 Durham, North Carolina over the issue of school integration. (Sam Rockwell, Tarahji O. Henson, Wes Bentley, Anne Heche)

71. Sia‘s Music — the story of a sober drug dealer and their disabled sister. (Kate Hudson, Hector Elizondo, Maddie Ziegler)

72. Julius Onah‘s Luce — (Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, Tim Roth, Kelvin Harrison, Jr.)

73. Lone Scherfig‘s The Kindness of Strangers — Four people suffering through the worst crises of their lives. (Andrea Riseborough, Zoe Kazan, Caleb Landry Jones, Jay Baruchel)

74. Chiwetel Ejiofor‘s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind — A boy in Malawi helps his village by building a wind turbine after reading about them in a library book. (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Aïssa Maïga, Joseph Marcell, Noma Dumezweni)

75.Christoph Waltz‘s Georgetown — Ulrich Mott, an ambitious social climber, marries a wealthy widow in Washington D.C. in order to mix with powerful political players. (Christoph Waltz, Annette Bening, Corey Hawkins, Vanessa Redgrave)

I bunked in the New York City region from late ’08 to March ’11 — call it a year and a half. Maybe my memory is a bit hazy but my general impression was that Manhattan screenings and press junkets happened more or less in concert with the same activities in Los Angeles. You didn’t lose out by being a New Yorker — you had approximately the same access to timely screenings. Or so it seemed.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Over the decades I’ve been lucky enough to know and trust many women of good character, but mostly in the realm of friendship.

I’m speaking of sensible, practical-minded women — women I always felt I could trust and rely upon and who always had a certain steadiness. And who were wise about human nature, and had a pretty good idea about who they were and believed in hard work and discipline and who always offered affection in a comforting, nourishing, no-pressure sort of way. Women, in short, who’ve reminded me in certain ways of my late mother, Nancy.

Every guy on the planet says this, I know.

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Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck‘s Never Look Away (Sony Classics, 11.30) is a sprawling, three-hour epic about a gifted German painter who gradually finds his voice over a long period of totalitarian rule. It begins in World War II and ends sometime in the late ’60s. (Or so I recall.) Like von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, it focuses on the tension between an artist and changing political regimes and upheavals affecting his art.

Inspired by the life of painter Gerhard Richter, who lived under Nazi and Communist rule in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s before escaping to West Germany in ’61, it’s “engaging” in a rather prim and conservative manner, like a romantic TV movie or an on-the-nose airport novel. This happens, that happens…chapter by chapter, episode by episode. The viewer is always being told that the Richter-like protagonist (played by the not-very-tall Tom Schilling) is moving towards a profound climax or destiny of some sort. Struggling through all kinds of adversity and difficulty but gradually breaking through.

It honestly reminded me of The Other Side of Midnight except it’s about a committed artist rather than Marie France Pisier‘s gold-digger. The generous servings of gratuitous (but entirely welcome) nudity also carry a ’70s echo. It costars Sebastian Koch (the striking lead in The Lives of Others), Paula Beer, Saskia Rosendahl and Oliver Masucci.

Obviously I didn’t find it brilliant, but I didn’t mind it. I was never bored. The last hour is the most rewarding. Most of the critical community has been thumbs-up, and some have been knocked out. Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman has called it “a stunning masterpiece…one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my life.” Who am I to dispute that kind of passion?

A German critic friend says it’s “aimed clearly at a higher-educated, middle-class audience that has an interest in art and history, but not necessarily in cinema. There’s a long tradition in German cinema for films like this that have all done really well. But I agree with you that it’s quite stuffy and almost antiquated — quite the opposite of the kind of risk-taking and wild art that the film champions.”

You may see a breezy, hah-haayyy! Hollywood Reporter cover shot of the Vice trio — director-cowriter Adam McKay, costars Amy Adams and Christian Bale. And you may be chuckling over Bale’s decision to skinny himself down to his Machinist weight after becoming a lardbucket to play the Ultra-Luciferian Dick Cheney. And you may enjoy McKay’s head-rest sitting posture during the video chat. And your interest in seeing Vice may be greater as a result. All to the good!

But what I see, mainly, is the Los Angeles community (and the Annapurna marketing team in particular) saying to the New York film journalist community, “Aaahh, being first out of the gate is so nice! We’ve seen the film, talked about it, sussed it out. Some of us may even be dipping in for seconds. You New Yorkers will see it soon, don’t worry, but in the meantime it feels so good, so top-of-the-world to be the first responders.”