Posted 15 years ago: There’s no such thing as a very good or great movie that brings people down, regardless of subject matter. ‘Sad’ or ‘solemnly moving’ is not the same thing as “depressing.” There’s nothing lower in the movie-watching universe than the kind of person who sits through Au Hasard Balthazar and comes out saying ‘whoa, bummer…the donkey died.’

The only truly depressing movie experience is when you’re watching something gross, tacky, incompetent or ineffective.

Life can be hard, cruel, oppressive, boring…but it’s all we’ve got to hold onto and it’s better than being dead.

Movies that relay or reflect basic truths will never be depressing, but those that tell lies of omission by way of fanciful bullshit always poison the air.

Sadness in good movies is not depressing — it’s just a way of re-experiencing honest hurt. Ordinary People is sad, but if you think it’s depressing as in ‘lemme outta here’ there’s something wrong with you.

I’ll give you depressing: living a rich full life (children, compassion, wealth, adventure) and then dying at a ripe old age and coming back (i.e., reincarnated) as a chicken at a Colonel Sanders chicken ranch.

My beef is with movies that impart a distinct feeling of insanity by way of delirium or delusion, or a bizarre obsession. Frank Darabont’s The Green Mile (turn on the current! smell that burning flesh! cuddle that cute mouse!) and The Majestic (rancid small-town “folksiness”) are two such films. Ditto Steven Spielberg’s Always.

Martin Scorsese’s Kundun isn’t a downer. It’s worse than that — it’s paralyzing. And yet Scorsese made one of the greatest spiritual-high movies ever with The Last Temptation of Christ.

On the other hand, Marty sent thousands upon thousands of moviegoers into states of numbing depression when Sharon Stone gave Joe Pesci a blowjob in Casino.

Leaving Las Vegas, Mike Figgis’ film about a lush who’s decides to drink himself to death and doesn’t quit until he succeeds, has never been and never will be depressing. If you’re engaged to someone who thinks it is, tell him or her it’s over — you’ll be divorcing them eventually, so you might as well cut to the chase.

Every couple of years I mention Frank Perry‘s still-inaccessible Play It As It Lays. I’ve been writing about it for 15 years, and you still can’t stream it. Based on a Joan Didion’s 1970 novel, this angsty, slowly-sinking-into-the-Hollywood-swamp thing has always been an offbeat feminist film, but somehow it never got sufficient credit for that. Tuesday Weld‘s Maria (pronounced “Mar-EYE-ah”) is a wealthy gloomhead, but she’s constantly skeptical of the men in her life as well as the male-dominated film industry. Mocking, dismissive, disengaged. I wonder how today’s heightened, enlightened industry consciousness would process a remake? The #MeToo community would approve. A fair number of critics cheered when it opened in the fall of ’72, but it only made a million bucks.

Is Suspiria to Luca Guadagnino what The Women was to George Cukor? I don’t know why I just wrote that. I’ve heard that Suspiria contains a striking en masse nude scene (all women, all ages and shapes). Given that this trailer is more of a show-and-tell than the last one and especially considering that this Amazon release will soon debut at the Venice Film Festival, I’m a little surprised there isn’t more of a taste of this. Another entry in the proud tradition of elevated horror — Personal Shopper, Hereditary, A Quiet Place, The Babadook, etc.

Incidentally: Word around the campfire is that The Nightingale, the latest from Babadook director Jennifer Kent, may run into critical barbs when it debuts in Venice on Wednesday, 9.5. Maybe. Which, if it happens, would be a shame. The Nightingale is the ONLY woman-directed film accepted into Venice competition.

I’m peddling down a country road on my red Schwinn, cruising in an imaginary bike lane, careful not to stray into that portion of the road that belongs to cars. There are two kinds of drivers who pass me. One, confident, steady-as-they-go types (usually guys between their 20s and 50s) who come within, say, three or four feet of my “bike lane.” Which is no biggie because they know how to drive, etc. And two, middle-aged and older women who veer a good 10 to 12 feet to the left, going almost entirely into the opposing-traffic lane because they’re so fearful of the possibility of clipping me.

We can’t all be Mario Andretti or Paul Newman — I get that — but whenever one of these nervous nellies swerves to the left as if they’re avoiding a dead moose in the road, I can’t help but regard them with a dismissive head-shake.

…from the latest Bond franchise flick is of marginal interest because Bond films are (a) wanks, (b) outliers, (c) cultural anomalies, (d) the cinematic equivalent of a northern Atlantic iceberg, seen from a passing ocean liner at 4:30 am, (e) utterly lacking in any kind of social echo or reflection factor, and therefore glorious and vital, (f) harmless, (g) the original jizz-whizz experience, (h) one of the last surviving expressions of the 20th Century Anglo Saxon rogue male aesthetic, and therefore a kind of odd window into that JFK– or Hugh Hefner-reflecting mentality or consciousness, (i) fun to keep around from a Smithsonian Museum cultural nostalgia viewpoint, (j) mainly about augmenting the financial portfolios of Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, who, like Edward G. Robinson’s Johnny Rocco, always want “more”, (k) the movie equivalent of a vinyl 33 that keeps skipping and repeating the same song fragment, over and over and over, (l) would feel superficially rejuvenated if Daniel Craig were to be replaced by Donald Glover or, perversely, the Sean Connery-like Henry Cavill, which would be interpreted in SJW circles as a gesture of damn-the-torpedoes cultural defiance, (m) one of the leading antitheses of the age-old maxim that you can’t reap financial gain if you don’t take a risk.

You can tell right away that Mahershala Ali is going to be extra good in this. His character, Don Shirley, reminds me of James Baldwin. Viggo Mortensen‘s Tony Lip feels a little broad, maybe a little too predictably Sopranos-like, but Mortensen is too good of an actor to rely on stock cliches. Select Manhattan journos got an early looksee at Green Book this evening; presumably the same access is being offered in Los Angeles as we speak. I have a very good feeling about this.

HE’s Google-powered search engine has always worked well enough, but maybe I need to upgrade it or something. Because it’s a little bit stupid.

Last night I searched for my review of Susanna Nicchiarelli‘s Nico, 1988, which is currently playing at the Film Forum. (Here it is.) I’ve found that the engine works better if you use just one term, so I typed in “Nico”. The first thing it found were articles mentioning Nicolas Roeg (brilliant) and then Nicole Kidman (get the pattern?), Nicolas Cage, Nicole Holofcener, etc.. Then it finally explored articles mentioning the Teutonic blonde who sang with the Velvet Underground. You’d think that the search term “Nico” would bring up Nico articles first and then pieces on Roeg, Kidman and Cage, but no.

Nico, by the way, was going with the late Brian Jones around the time of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. Nico was 5’10 and Jones was 5’6″. I don’t think I could do that.

I had to focus on some non-column stuff today. Happens every so often. I try to never miss a day, etc.

There is no more impassioned fan of Alfonso Cuaron than myself, but this new Roma poster doesn’t make it. A couple of kids sharing an afternoon moment, and way back when Alfonso was one of those kids…I get it. This is going to sound stupidly on-the-nose, but the poster isn’t trying hard enough. Too sleepy, too laid back. All I know (and please don’t take this the wrong way) is that I glanced at it an hour ago and said to myself, “Nope, too passive.” I was there once, nine or ten years old, lost in a comic book, dreaming my life away. But when it comes to anticipating a hotshot award-season film by way of a single image, I want more. HE is totally on Team Alfonso, but I have to be honest here. I doubt if I’m alone on this.

I had some time to kill earlier this afternoon, and decided to catch a 4K restoration of Chinatown at the Film Forum. I was hoping, naturally, for a “bump” effect — an upgrade from how the Bluray looks when I watch it on my 65-inch Sony 4K HDR.

No dice, no bump — it looked exactly like my 1080p Bluray does at home. Worse, the sound was set at whisper level — just loud enough to be able to hear the dialogue, but no more than that.

Cheapskate theatre owners do this all over to save on sound-system wear and tear. Which is why seeing a classic film at a revival-repertory house almost always pisses me off. Don’t theatres like the Film Forum realize they’re competing with home systems? The last time I saw Chinatown in my living room it sounded a helluva lot better than it did today. I have a fairly nice sound system, complete with a heavy bass woofer. Jerry Goldsmith‘s thunky piano chords sound beautiful.

I’m seeing Lee Chang-dong‘s Burning at 6 pm, or 50 minutes from now. Every Cannes critic raved, including two or three who told me I’d made a huge mistake by missing it. I may have bypassed it because of the 148-minute length. “It’s a psychological thriller about class and resentment,” I told myself. “And therefore comes with certain perimeters and expectations. Does it really need to be two and a half hours long?” I’ll know the answer soon enough.

Having read the TMZ piece with the Asia Argento-Jimmy Bennett photos and Argento’s text to a friend about same, a colleague says the following:

“Asia says she wants to be part of the 90% that doesn’t give a fuck about this shit? Really? Fuck you, lady. You’ve been doing nothing but being a #MeToo crusader for a year. YOU are the one that made people freak about nearly every man in Hollywood. What the fuck?

“And by the way it doesn’t matter if Jimmy came onto her or not. It really doesn’t. Sure, if she wants to stand on the side of those who deny they assaulted people because those people were willing participants, just like Harvey Weinstein? Great. Go for it. But that is not who she has been in the public eye.

“She’s also ready to lay 100% of the blame on poor, dead Anthony Bourdain, who’s beginning to look more and more like the one who wanted it covered up because his reputation was also on the line.”

HE comment: In the TMZ text Argento describes a randy Jimmy plowing her soil and writing afterward that he loves her…totally into it. I wasn’t there, but this seems a lot more realistic than the image that certain Twitter snowflakes were advancing, that of a traumatized, sexually uncertain youth who felt assaulted by a ravenous older woman.

HE to London-based critic who shall be nameless: Are you still maintaining that my initial take on this episode was the “wrong” one?