I saw John Crowley‘s The Goldfinch (Warner Bros., 9.13) last week. Due respect to fans of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2013 novel, but I immediately sensed a lack of cinematic oxygen — no allure, intrigue or fascination. I immediately wanted to leave the theatre, see something else. Maybe get some hot food on Venice Blvd. or hike around Benedict Canyon. Or maybe just leap on the motorcycle and go.

I certainly wanted to escape the presence of Oakes Fegley, whose “cute little boy with glasses” routine rubbed me the wrong way and then some.

It’s been mentioned that Tartt’s 784-page book, which is about a young boy’s meandering, years-long adventures on the antique and art-theft circuit after suffering through a Manhattan museum bombing and the resultant death of his mother, should have been adapted into a Netflix or Amazon miniseries (six or seven hours, say) rather than a 149-minute theatrical film. Maybe.

All I knew is, I didn’t want to watch it. The movie felt flat, dull, inert. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I tend to have difficulty with trauma-recovery dramas, especially those involving terrorism. But I also have difficulty with movies in which Nicole Kidman plays a Manhattan woman of wealth and sensitivity who cares…oh, forget it. Kidman’s practiced “sensitivity” annoys like a dripping bathtub faucet at 3 am, or like a jackhammer.

Ansel Elgort plays the 20something version of Fegley’s Theo Decker character. I’m sorry but the 25 year-old actor made a mistake in agreeing to star in this thing. It will do nothing but detract from his reputation. Then again he’ll star next year as “Tony” in Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story. So there’s that.

[1:46] “It’s got a rhythm, got a musicality, and it’s a challenge because it’s so poetic and [there are so many] expressions to play on your mind and accomplish so much. But at the same time it’s elevated so you have to root it…you have to know exactly why you’re saying it. But, like all good text, once you jump on it and you jump on it in a pure way, it’s like a freight train…it just takes you.”

From 2019 Toronto Film Festival discussion of Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse (A24, 10.18) — Eggers, Willem Dafoe and RBatz.

One of the reasons Brad Pitt is going to win Best Supporting Actor for his Cliff Booth performance is because the Academy membership knows that it needs to offer a make-up for not giving him the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Moneyball. Nudging ahead of George Clooney‘s honorable turn in The Descendants, Pitt’s performance as Billy Beane was the best of the five nominated performances from 2011. Jean Dujardin winning for his silent but exceedingly broad performance in The Artist was (a) effing ridiculous and (b) deeply embarassing in hindsight. The simpletons voted for Dujardin while those who recognize and appreciate real, charismatic movie-star performing voted for Pitt, and the simpletons won.

Uncut Gems is a full-barrelled, deep dive into the realm of a manic, crazy-fuck gambler (Adam Sandler), and yes, it “feels like being locked inside the pinwheeling brain of a lunatic for more than two hours,” as Peter Debruge wrote. And guess what? It’ll make your head explode and drive you fucking nuts. By the time it’s over you’ll be drooling and jabbering and gasping for air.

And yet Uncut Gems has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In other words not one person so far feels as I do. And I’m telling you the truth, mon freres. Which is why you can’t trust “critics”, per se. Because they’re all living in their own little fickle cubbyholes while Hollywood Elsewhere is standing tall and firm with its feet planted on the sidewalk and looking dead smack at cosmic reality each and every minute of every day…no let-up.

Well, it does to some extent. But the fish always stinks from the head.

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Two days after the Toronto Film Festival debut of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, it seems obvious if not inescapable that Tom Hanks‘ performance as Fred Rogers will be campaigned as a Best Actor thang. If this happens David Poland would be “surprised”, but he’s nonetheless convinced that Hanks can’t win against Joker‘s Joaquin Pheonix and Marriage Story‘s Adam Driver. Perhaps not but by the calculus of the Poland curse, this is almost a dead-to-rights guarantee that Hanks will collect his third Best Actor Oscar.

Past Poland Curse victims: Rachel Getting Married (which Poland called “the best American film of the last 15 years“), Munich, Dreamgirls, Phantom of the Opera, Quills, Finding Forrester and the Reverse Poland Curse trio of The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Zodiac and There Will Be Blood (all of which Poland panned as “the trilogy of Critical Onanism,” and therefore provided an awards-season headwind).

Ex-CIA operative and Dick Cheney nemesis Valerie Plame (portrayed by Naomi Watts in Fair Game) is running as a Democrat to represent New Mexico’s Third District in Congress.

And, just as significantly, she’s launched her campaign with a totally killer ad called “Undercover.” Produced by Putnam Partners, the ad shows Plame driving a Chevy Camaro backwards on a dusty rural road (and I mean tear-assing along at 50 or 60 mph like Mel Gibson in an early ’90s Lethal Weapon flick) as she talks about her contrarian history.

After her husband, Joe Wilson, wrote a N.Y. Times op-ed piece questioning Bush administration assertions about Saddam Hussein‘s capabilities regarding yellow-cake uranium, Plame’s secret CIA identity was illegally leaked by Cheney and Scooter Libby but more precisely by Richard Armitage. Libby was popped for lying about it. President Trump pardoned Libby on 4.13.18.

Plame’s final line: “Mr. President, I’ve got a few scores to settle.”

Lorene Scafaria‘s Hustlers (STX, 9.13) has screened in Toronto, but I haven’t heard zip from anyone about Los Angeles screenings or even a link. You cannot trust the current 96% Rotten Tomatoes score. Or the 80% Metacritic rating. Not really, not completely. Because most of the critics are reviewing the gender politics aspect rather than just the film itself. Only Hollywood Elsewhere can be counted upon to deliver a throughly frank, straight-from-the-shoulder assessment. And it’s looking now as if I’m going to have to buy a ticket on Thursday night.

Marielle Heller‘s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood “is not a Fred Rogers biopic,” THR awards columnist Scott Feinberg has stated. “Rogers, in fact, isn’t even the central protagonist — that’s Matthew Rhys, playing a magazine writer based on Esquire’s Tom Junod, whose 1998 profile of Rogers inspired the film. But make no mistake about it: this is Hanks’ film.”

Which is what everyone has been saying, and is why Feinberg’s article is titled “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Could Propel Tom Hanks to First Oscar Nom in 19 Years” — fine.

But Feinberg doesn’t say whether he’s talking about Hanks as a contender for Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor. Shouldn’t he clarify?

I’m asking because of a claim by Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson that Sony has decided to run Hanks in supporting and Matthew Rhys as a lead. Thompson wrote that campaigning Rhys as a lead is “fair,” considering that he plays an Esquire writer who profiles Hanks’ Fred Rogers. “The movie is really about him,” Thompson asserts.

The bottom line is that it shouldn’t and doesn’t matter how much screen time a performance occupies. If an actor dominates the film like Hanks does in A Beautiful Day or like Anthony Hopkins did in Silence of the Lambs, he should certainly be pushed for Best Actor.

Currently posted: Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson has reported that as far as an awards campaign for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is concerned, Sony intends to push Matthew Rhys in lead and Tom Hanks in supporting?

Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy is claiming that A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is “ultimately Hanks’ show, and Hanks’ show alone.”

Jordan Ruimy said this morning that Rhys “is in practically every scene and Hanks isn’t, but Rhys’ story is the weak part…the movie lags whenever Hanks isn’t on-screen.”