Martin Short's socks are totally killer. The black leather lace-ups (probably Italian) are great also. Nice black suit, olive taupe sweater. Easily the best-dressed Club Random guest in the history of this relatively young podcast. Seriously, the socks are wonderful.
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After months and months of floundering around in distribution purgatory, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire‘s Black Flies has finally landed a theatrical release date — Friday, 3.29.
Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire‘s Black Flies (Open Road), a pounding, brutally realistic New York City action drama about living-on-the-ragged-edge paramedics.
It beats the shit out of you, this film, but in a way that you can’t help but admire. It’s a tough sit but a very high-quality one. The traumatized soul of lower-depths Brooklyn and the sad, ferociously angry residents who’ve been badly damaged in ways I’d rather not describe has never felt more in-your-face.
In terms of assaultive realism and gritty authenticity Black Flies matches any classic ’70s or ’80s New York City film you could mention…The French Connection, Serpico, Prince of the City, Q & A, Good Time, Across 110th Street.
And what an acting triumph for Sean Penn, who plays the caring but worn-down and throughly haunted Gene Rutkovsky, a veteran paramedic who bonds with and brings along Tye Sheridan‘s Ollie Cross, a shaken-up Colorado native who lives in a shitty Chinatown studio and is trying to get into medical school.
Rutkovsky is a great hardboiled character, and Penn has certainly taken the bull by the horns and delivered his finest performance since his Oscar-winning turns in Mystic River (’03) and Milk (’08).
And Sheridan is also damn good in this, his best film ever. His character eats more trauma and anxiety and suffers more spiritual discomfort than any rookie paramedic deserves, and you can absolutely feel everything that’s churning around inside the poor guy.
At first I thought this 120-minute film would be Bringing Out The Dead, Part 2, but Black Flies, which moves like an express A train and feels more like 90 minutes, struck me as harder and punchier than that 1999 Martin Scorsese film, which I didn’t like all that much after catching it 23 and 1/2 years ago and which I’ve never rewatched.
"The eccentrics are really the only real critics these days. There are so many formerly respectable, self-styled film gurus who've just laid down and accepted their hackdom in the last decade. For anyone who prefers serious criticism, the nutters are all we have." -- comment about August 2010 article titled "Nutter Critics."
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You may have heard that most many film critics are politically subservient cowards and whores...obsequious lapdogs...damp-finger-to-the-wind weather vanes...dweebs who write within an elitist, self-regarding bubble and pretty much for each other...they wouldn't dare admit to an honest Joe or Jane Popcorn emotion about anything.
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It’s definitely not welcome news that departing Los Angeles Times film critic Justin Chang is joining The New Yorker as its senior film critic, or at least as a co-senior bigmouth with Richard Brody (i.e., “the ArmondWhite of the far left”).
Chang is a brilliant, first-rate critic who has passed along many valuable judgments and perceptions over the years. But over the past six or seven annums he’s become a bit of a social justice warrior (at least in my eyes) and something of an identity ideologue. Example: Last October Chang pannedTheHoldovers over a single depiction of racist cruelty between two minor characters.
The Chang hire means two things, and both are breaking my heart.
One, The New Yorker film desk is now doubly woked-up and, in my opinion, half-fanatical. I’ve been an occasional fan of Brody’s essays, but there’s no forgetting that in his 10.13.22 Tar review he actually doubted the existence of wokeism and cancel culture. That, good sir, is fanaticism.
And two, NewYorker film critic Anthony Lane, hired by Tina Brown 31 years ago and one of my absolute favorite wordsmith smart-asses ever since, has been kickedupstairs by editor David Remnick.
Lane will be “expanding to writing [on] a wider range of topics,” Remnick has announced — a polite way of saying that Lane’s senior stripes have been torn off.
This is not the end of my online NewYorker subscription, but Remnick is downgrading and more or less humiliating one of the very few non-woke (or mostly non-woke) critics of a senior status. Not cool and rather shitty in fact.
Within the Best Actress race, AwardsDaily’s Sasha Stone is flirting with the idea of a surprise win for Nyad’s Annette Bening.
NYC gabbermouth BillMcCuddy: “Most younger members will vote for Gladstone and Stone, and this could cancel them out. The Old Guard will ALL vote for oft-nominated Bening.”
Suggested Jimmy Kimmel joke, written by McCuddy: “It’s ironic now that both Bening and Beatty are known for their breast strokes.”
Deadline’s Pete Hammond:
HE just wants the Best Actress Oscar to go to an actress who delivered a performance of serious merit — Stone, Bening, Huller or Mulligan. I’m fine with any of these guys winning.
…life wouldn’t have a great deal of meaning. Okay, it would obviously deliver a certain amount on its own weight and steam, but movies bring it all into focus, if you catch my drift.
This may be the greatest George Lucas quote I’ve ever read. It makes me even more sorry that he’s worn so many godawful flannel shirts.
Martin Short's socks are totally killer. The black leather lace-ups (probably Italian) are great also. Nice black suit, olive taupe sweater. Easily the best-dressed Club Random guest in the history of this relatively young podcast. Seriously, the socks are wonderful.
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