For my money, this Viola Davis vs. Meryl Streep scene in Doubt is one of the great Hollywood face-offs of all time. Easily on the level of that classic restaurant scene between Robert De Niro vs. Al Pacino in Heat, if not above and beyond it. You’ll notice that no film this year has delivered anything on this level. (Right?) Please name the other great one-on-one scenes. Not just between two actors, but between major-league, world-class talents. If Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift had costarred in a well-directed film in the early to mid ’50s and gone eyeball to eyeball…that kind of thing.

For the last 15 or 20 years critics have been lamenting the fact that amply-funded, carefully-composed, middle-class movies with toney, well-paid movie stars have become all but extinct. Especially the brainy, sophisticated dramas and dramedies. I’m mainly talking about Mike Nichols or James L. Brooks-level stuff. Or early Nora Ephron or pre-North Rob Reiner-styled films about faintly witty, educated, well-off urban white people and their problems. Broadcast News, As Good As It Gets, When Harry Met Sally, Groundhog Day, Heartburn, Sleepless in Seattle…that line of country.

Or something like Silver Linings Playbook, which felt to me like a vague descendant of the Nichols thing. Or polished white-soul romantic dramas like Bridges of Madison County.

Notice how the above paragraphs sound vaguely racist? These are the times in which we live. If you say you find something pleasing or agreeable about thoughtful, well-crafted films that happen to concern white characters, you’re automatically regarded as dicey or suspicious. Just ask…no, I won’t say his name.

Almost all of today’s adult-friendly quality fare has moved over to cable and streaming, of course. Minus the aid of a comprehensive survey I’m presuming that HBO, Showtime, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and the others have taken a stab at some kind of facsimile of the above …smart, urbane, witty, perhaps even book-based.

But even if they are, the culture is no longer geared to pay attention to such films as it did 25 or 30 years ago. Our attention pulled in so many directions, many of us texting as we watch, etc. If and when one of these films were to be made for streaming, they wouldn’t settle into the conversation like they used to. Because everything gets consumed so quickly, and at increasing speeds.

I re-watched Heartburn six years ago, but I went there again last night with the excuse that I’d never seen it in HD on a 65-inch screen. Same modest satisfactions, same mixed reactions.

Posted on 5.12.12: “I was moved to give it another go, and it was intermittently entertaining once more. I miss this kind of well-funded, well-acted, sophisticated adult dramedy with that Nichols attitude and a fine commercial gloss. I didn’t even mind the Carly Simon songs. And Meryl Streep‘s portrayal of Rachel Samstadt (i.e., the stand-in for Heartburn screenwriter-novelist Nora Ephron) has many genuine moments, especially of vulnerability.

“But the film has a huge roadblock or two. Or three.

If you haven’t seen Michael Moore‘s Fahrenheit 11/9 and thereby contemplated the analogy between our present situation and 1930s Germany, please listen to a portion of this discussion between Moore and Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy. It starts at 2:45.

Moore mentions the cultural similarities between the U.S. and Germany of 85 years ago (educated citizenry, similar values, same Democratic traditions) and how reasonable people in 1933 Germany assured each other that the barely-elected National Socialists wouldn’t go crazy and that everyone should dial it down and not worry so much. He explains that our modern civilized brains naturally downplay or rationalize threats and that “we don’t go to the place where we did in the caveman days,” meaning that in the Pleistocene era when our ancestors heard a growl or a roar they immediately said “danger!” Not so much now.

Bryan Singer‘s Bohemian Rhapsody is no masterpiece, but not my idea of a burn either. Roughly 70% of the film is composed of uninspired “this happened and then that happened” chapters, so much of the time you’re left with this feeling of being underwhelmed but not exactly bored. And yet Rami Malek‘s performance as Freddie Mercury is vivid and wild and a relishy contact high, at least from time to time, and there are portions of the film that really connect.

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Don’t ask about the emotionally disastrous extra-marital affair that I fell into when I was an in-office freelancer at People magazine, and which continued until her husband found out. No relationship had ever delivered so much heartache, hurt or frustration. Graham Greene and Tom Stoppard had nothing on us. I was a man of almost constant sorrow. I mean I was so upset by one of our arguments that I made a reckless left turn on Pico Blvd. and got slammed by a speeding BMW, and for weeks I told myself it wasn’t really my fault — it was the married girlfriend’s.

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The stupidest movie-plot development of 2018 happened in John Krasinski‘s A Quiet Place. The more I think about it the more I’m persuaded that it’s actually one of the stupidest plot developments of all time, and certainly of the 21st Century. Most people reading this know what I’m about to mention, but here goes anyway.

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Just around the corner is Nobody’s Fool (Paramount, 11.2), a Tyler Perry comedy with Tiffany Haddish, Tika Sumpter, Omari Hardwick, Mehcad Brooks, Amber Riley and Whoopi Goldberg. It follows “a recently-paroled woman who tries to help her sister get revenge on the man who catfished her.”

Given the history and pedigree of the director-writer, I can double-triple-quadruple guarantee this won’t begin to measure up to the quality of Robert Benton‘s non-comedic Nobody’s Fool (’94) — no way, not a chance.

Perry is Atlanta fast food — Benton is haute cuisine.

It means something, I think, that Roger “Nick the Greek” Durling, director of the Santa Barbara Film Festival, has decided to gift Glenn Close with the festival’s Maltin Modern Master Award on Saturday, February 2nd. In doing so Durling is basically wagering that Close’s performance in The Wife will result in a Best Actress nomination for the 2019 Oscars.

“Nick” has been wrong a couple of times, but most of the time his instincts have been on the money

Close will be nominated because her role in Bjorn Runge’s film, a wife of a Nobel-winning novelist who has also been his secret literary and creative fuel, doesn’t just synchronize with progressive attitudes among professional-class women — it actually strikes a huge chord among 50-plus types. On top of the fact that Close has been nominated for six Best Actress Oscars and never won.

The 34th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival will run from Wednesday, 1.30.19 thru Saturday, 2.9.

To hear it from Indiewire‘s Ben Travers, the hyperbole about the sixth and final season of House Of Cards being all about Claire (Robin Wright) and a payback against the patriarchy theme (‘It’s my turn’) is mostly bullshit.

“Despite the hype, Season 6 isn’t Claire’s show,” he writes. “It’s still Frank’s, which undercuts the season’s many attempts at women-first stories and keeps momentum stagnant.

“The showrunners gave themselves the perfect out at the end of last season, a bit of fortuitous timing all but wasted. When Claire addressed the camera and said ‘My turn’ and all but erased her camera-whore hubby from control, there was no reason the audience should believe otherwise.

“Instead, five of the eight final episodes over-emphasize Frank’s importance and fail to create arcs worthy of Wright’s talents or Claire’s individuality. Worse yet, they weaken the show’s conscious effort to highlight the discrimination facing female politicians.

“There’s a scene, clipped in the Season 6 trailer, where Claire is stopped in the hallway to talk to a combative dissenter. As he speaks, she turns and sees a camera trained on her from another room, so she looks back at the guy setting her up and simply says, ‘The reign of the middle-aged white man is over.’

“These days, her statement is easy to get behind. But what House of Cards doesn’t seem to realize is timely words can come across as posturing when you’re just reciting them for the cameras.”

“Bohemian Rhapsody is very good, even terrific in places. The Live Aid ending is a huge wow.

“The annoying thing is how ordinary it is in so many moments early on. Freddie [Mercury]’s first meeting with the band members, shopping in the ladies department, his on-the-nose realization that he’s bisexual. The script is giving us Lifetime movie moments. And then there’s Malek’s performance. He sinks his teeth in, no question. But sometimes I’m watching a really good actor and sometimes I’m watching an SNL sketch performer.

“Now the real question, and I admit it’s a rude one. Was Queen ever really THAT popular? That Live Aid audience got an incredible performance, but I think they were there to see everyone else on the bill and Queen just showed up.”

HE reply: I didn’t seriously fall for Queen until after Freddie’s death (i.e., early ’90s). But I’ve been a hardcore Queenie ever since.

The Mirror‘s Chris Kitching is reporting that “parts of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi‘s body have been found at the Saudi consul general’s home in Istanbul, according to a Turkish opposition leader. Dogu Perincek, leader of Turkey’s Rodina party, claimed in an interview that body parts were discovered in a well in the Saudi consul’s garden.”

If you’ve been involved in a murder you don’t hide evidence on the property of allies or co-conspirators. You bury the body parts in some remote wooded area or put them into a weighted bag and dump it into the sea. How dumb are these guys?