I’ve said this a couple of times, but now that Damien Chazelle‘s First Man has begun its commercial run, please try and catch it in a real IMAX theatre. The moon landing sequence at the end is 40% to 50% better on an IMAX screen, I swear.

Key HE observation: “Chazelle’s film operates so closely to the personality of the low-key Neil Armstrong that to some it feels chilly and remote-feeling and a little too tech-heady. But this isn’t a problem for me at all.

“One thing I really like about First Man is Chazelle’s refusal to do the Ron Howard thing by cutting to wide or establishing shots for standard perspective’s sake. Instead Chazelle keeps us inside the cockpit seat alongside Neil almost the whole time. And Ryan Gosling‘s subdued, often muted performance is actually daring in its own way — he’s delivering the full emotional boatload but in spare, somber, minimalist fashion.”

Pull-quote from Tomriss Laffly’s Film Journal review: “Damien Chazelle’s technically astonishing First Man is a poetic non-blockbuster of claustrophobic intimacy.”

To hear it from The Limey‘s Terry Valentine (i.e., Peter Fonda), 1966 was the only year in which “the ’60s” were fully in flower. There were countless manifestations — spiritual, creative — and hints of coming disturbances. April ’66 saw the famous Time magazine cover that asked “Is God dead?”, which was used by Roman Polanski during the filming of Rosemary’s Baby a year later. The following month saw the release of Bob Dylan‘s Blonde On Blonde (and the coughing heat pipes in “Visions of Johanna”) and Brian Wilson‘s Pet Sounds, and three months later Revolver, the Beatles’ “acid album” which turned out to be their nerviest and most leap-forwardy, was released. All kinds of mildly trippy, tingly, unnerving things were popping all over.

But you’d never guess what was happening to go by the mood, tone and between-the-lines repartee during the 39th Oscar Awards, which honored the best films of 1966 but aired in April ’67, or roughly seven weeks before the release of Sgt. Pepper. Bob Hope‘s opening monologue is punishing, almost physically painful to endure. And look…there’s Ginger Rogers!

Fred Zinneman‘s A Man For All Seasons won six Oscars that night — Picture, Director (Fred Zinneman), Actor (Paul Scofield), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction — and there’s no question that it still “plays”. Well acted, beautifully written by Robert Bolt. But it also feels a bit smug by today’s standards, a little too starchy and theatrical.

What 1966 films play best by 2018 aesthetic standards? Certainly The Sand Pebbles, which should have won Best Picture, and which contained Steve McQueen‘s most open-hearted, career-best performance. The second best ’66 film by my yardstick was and is Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Blowup (that London-based film completely absorbed and reflected what was going in in late ’65 and ’66). The third finest was Richard Brooks‘ The Professionals, a crafty, ace-level western actioner that plays beautifully by today’s measure and which contains Lee Marvin‘s second-best performance (after “Walker” in ’67’s Point Blank).

Other ’66 hotties: Mike Nichols‘ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Lewis Gilbert‘s Alfie, John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds and Grand Prix, Milos Forman‘s Loves of a Blonde, Billy Wilder‘s The Fortune Cookie, Norman Jewison‘s The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, Claude Lelouch‘s A Man and a Woman, Gille Pontecorvo‘s The Battle of Algiers, Richard Lester‘s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Pier Paolo Woody Allen’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Karel Reisz‘s Morgan!, or a Suitable Case for Derangement.

For the most part Bohemian Rhapsody is a so-so, run-of-the-mill, by-the-numbers famous rock band saga, but I loved Rami Malek‘s appropriately showy performance as Freddie Mercury (especially during the last third) and being a longtime Queen fan I REALLY LOVED THE MUSICAL PORTIONS…hell, everyone will.

And of course (everyone’s been saying this) the film REALLY PULLS OUT THE STOPS for the Live Aid finale, and for this section alone the film is more than worth the price. It’s a guaranteed hit, of course, and a likely (all but certain?) Best Actor nomination for Malek.

(tapped out on iPhone, 10:15 pm…rain has stopped, streets are damp and reflecting)

Two days ago a critic friend warned that First Man may come under fire “on the level of identity politics. It’s the portrait of a stalwart ’50s straight-arrow white man and his hand-wringing, stand-by-your-man wife. So therefore it must be hated. It will be interesting this week to see if critics carry the identity-politics ball on this, in which ‘too cold’ becomes a metaphor for ‘too much in the way of tight-ass straight white guy material.’”

Yesterday The New Yorker‘s Richard Brody walked right into this narrative in a piece called “Damien Chazelle’s Neil Armstrong Biopic Is an Accidental Right-Wing Fetish Object“:

Significant passage: “Except for the protesters, First Man is whiter than a Fred-and-Ginger ballroom set.

“There are no Hidden Figures here; Neil, an engineer, does his own fancy calculations, thank you very much. The vast team effort to make the moon landing possible is reduced to background extras. The movie is centered on astronauts, who interact briefly with a handful of administrators and scientists; there are wives and children; and, otherwise, there are minions who line the corridor and cheer as Neil and his colleagues pass by on the way to the capsule. The moon mission was as much a matter of media as it was of science. The iconic moments of the moon landing are great television, and it took significant thought and labor on the part of NASA to figure out how to capture them.

“But Chazelle isn’t interested in process, or in how the facts were transformed into legend. Instead, he filters the legend to render it even more monumentally, unequivocally, inhumanly heroic.”

The invisible subtitle of Peter Hedges‘ Ben Is Back (Roadside, 12.7) is “oh, what a tangled mess we make of our lives when we trust our formerly drug-addicted sons and daughters to act like they’re past it and totally clean.” Doesn’t usually work that way. Julia Roberts’ too-trusting mom is the standout element; Lucas Hedges (heavier than in Manchester By The Sea and wearing a tennis–ball haircut) is the druggie son. A better-than-decent film that runs on a clock, the whole story unfolding within a 12-hour time period (or something like that).

So what’s the thinking behind Warner Bros.’ A Star is Born and 20th Century Fox’s Bohemian Rhapsody being submitted as dramas for the 2019 Golden Globe awards, instead of the expected musical or comedy category?

I’m presuming that the Warner Bros. strategists are calculating that a Golden Globes comedy/musical category may result in a kind of Academy-mindset downgrade for A Star Is Born. They want Bradley Cooper‘s romantic musical drama to be regarded as a burnished, triple-A effort in all respects and therefore Best Picture material, and so they’re going for a higher grade of estimation.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Kudos to Deadline‘s Pete Hammond for implying that the Gold Derby community is full of shit for buying into the idea of that Olivia Colman‘s performance as Queen Anne in The Favourite is a Best Actress thing, and stating plainly that in a fair and just world she “should be in supporting.”

Hammond is 100% correct because Colman is not playing a lead protagonist but a mark, the victim of a kind of royal-court con. By the standards of The Sting, she’s playing Robert Shaw while Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone — the film’s actual leads — are playing Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

Anne Thompson agrees but also seems to be capitulating to Colman’s Best Actress narrative because, she says, “Fox is maintaining a kind of radio silence” about the Colman thing.

Nobody is a greater admirer of Olivia Colman than myself. I’ve mentioned this before, but don’t forget that I actually raised dough to fund screenings of Tyrannosaur so people could appreciate how great Colman was in that film.

Significant Tom O’Neill remark: “Poor Glenn Close. If she doesn’t get nominated for The Wife…” Hammond: “Oh, she’ll get nominated.”

Thompson on Can You Ever Forgive Me‘s Melissa McCarthy: “Talk about a narrative!”

HE has issues with Jake “junket whore” Hamilton, but he’s completely correct here in pushing back against the anti-First Man tweets by Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Plus he fails to mention a noteworthy flag-unfurling scene involving Neil Armstrong‘s son.

If you’re someone who is concerned or offended by the “American flag controversy” surrounding First Man, I urge you to please watch this clip.

Having actually seen the film, I’d love to clarify a few things for you.

Thanks to @fox32news for giving me time to do this. pic.twitter.com/WP6zw5TyLo

— Jake Hamilton (@JakesTakes) October 10, 2018

First Man director Damien Chazelle to Josh Rothkppf during last weekend’s Hamptons Film festival, as posted by Gold Derby‘s Bill McCuddy: “Art is an inherently political act. But there is a distinction beneath that as to certain choices. That wasn’t a political decision and I hope anyone who sees the movie knows there’s nothing political about it. The moonwalk is only eight minutes. This is about the eight years that led up to it, but in terms of that moonwalk I felt a responsibility to show people things they hadn’t seen.”

Flags aside, HE objects to Hamilton’s “Ron Burgundy” suit jacket.

Consider this DVD Beaver comparison of a shot from Billy Wilder‘s Some Like It Hot. The top image, cropped in 1.66, is from the seven-year-old MGM Bluray (released in May 2011); the bottom image, cropped at 1.85, is from the new Criterion Bluray version.

See the differences? The woman in the top left has her forehead and bangs cropped off by the Criterion guys, and the 1.66 image reveals a part of her right eye that’s missing on the 1.85. On the 1.66 you can see a little bit more of Tony Curtis‘s satin dress below the pendant around his neck. And there’s a bit more image on the right side of the 1.66 version.

Please tell me how it’s better to see less of what Wilder and his dp, Charles Lang, originally captured via the Criterion Bluray. The quality of the two images is identical so how is it better to lose information on the tops and bottoms? Somebody explain. I’m all ears.

Initially posted on 8.5.14: This scene, I submit, contains one of Henry Fonda‘s greatest acting moments. It’s from William Wellman‘s The Ox-Bow Incident, of course — a 1943 film, set in 1880s Nevada, about a lynch mob looking to avenge an uncomfirmed killing of a well-liked local rancher. Fonda plays Gil Carter, the former boyfriend of Rose Mapen (Mary Beth Hughes) who has recently married a snooty San Franciscan named Swanson (George Meeker). Watch Fonda’s gradually shifting reactions to Swanson, particularly starting at the 1:40 mark. That very slight tilt of the head at 1:45…perfect!

Fonda was 37 at the time of filming. Jane was about five; Peter was two or three.