I caught Joe Berlinger‘s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile last week. The reason I didn’t feel moved to post anything is that I was impressed as far as it went, but the only element that really got me was Zac Efron‘s icy, understated portrayal of serial killer Ted Bundy.

It’s a straightforward, well-measured, non-emphatic portrait of a fiend, drawn from the point of view of Bundy’s onetime girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall (Lily Collins). The source is Kendall’s book “The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy“. Kudos to screenwriter Michael Werwie for pruning it down just so.

I was never bored, irked or irritated, but it’s obviously and necessarily an alienating thing to sit through, and the whole time I was telling myself “this is fairly decent but I can’t say I’m enjoying it, and how could I?”

Efron is fascinating. Before this his best performance was in Me and Orson Welles, but this is much stronger for its subtlety. He’s playing an extremely scary guy without overtly signalling full-monster vibes. Well, he does but with dozens of little darting, brush-flick ways.

What other films contain a top-notch lead performance while otherwise making you wish they would end soon?

Hollywood Elsewhere hasn’t seen Mike Dougherty‘s Fat Godzilla (Warner Bros, 5.19) and I’m pretty much determined to excuse myself until it streams, but I strongly disagree with Steve Weintraub’s praise on principle. More doesn’t mean better. I’ll always prefer a monster film that invests in hints of things to come rather than one that pushes it all in your face.

From my 5.10.14 review of Gareth Edwards‘ Godzilla: “I liked the fact that Edwards tones Godzilla down for most of its running time. Over and over he uses suggestion — visual and aural hints and implications — instead of blatant show-and-tells. He deserves admiration for delaying Godzilla’s first big MCU roar until the two-thirds mark and also holding back on the trademark fire-breathing until the big super-finale, in which San Francisco gets it but good.”

Amidst the general dissatisfaction with last night’s Game of Thrones episode (“The Bells“), an assessment by Giant Bomb associate producer and Brooklyn-based comedian Abby Russell stands out. HE commentariat remarks are hereby requested.

“People like you must create, otherwise you become a menace to society.”

The last trailer for the endlessly bumped Where’d You Go, Bernadette didn’t mention director Richard Linklater. The newbie doesn’t state his name either, but at least it acknowledges it’s “from the director of Boyhood and School of Rock.”

The Annapurna film, which stars Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup, Emma Nelson, Kristen Wiig, Judy Greer and James Urbaniak and has been described as a “mystery comedy-drama”, opens on August 9th.

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Keanu Reeves answered Stephen Colbert‘s question succinctly and gracefully. Everyone including Colbert approved, but of course KR sidestepped the question. Which struck me as a bit curious given a recollection that Reeves (a) has previously shared heavy-mystical-cat views about the scheme of things (or so I recall) and (b) played Siddartha in a Bertolucci film so he’s been down to the bottom of that well.

HE’s stock reply: “Life is a fountain, and each of us is a drop of water. The fountain shoots us out and we rise gloriously into the air, and then we fall back into the pool and get sucked down and then shoot out again. Okay, some water drops aren’t so glorious but it’s nonetheless a divine, infinite process.”

When the kids were young and asking these kinds of questions I used to say that when we die we become a baby again, except we never remember this. Well, every now and then some claim to.

Stockholm Arlanda is seemingly waaay out in the country. No sprawling suburbs or congested business strips nearby — just mile upon square mile of birch and pine trees, like you’re flying into Savannah. An unusually attractive airport setting. Not oversized, mellow vibe.

Plus it’s also somewhat pleasant to be around all these attractive Swedish people with their Nordic features, blonde hair (although black hair is equally plentiful) and relatively trim physiques. If you’ve done any travelling over the last 10 or 15 years you know that Jabbas are ubiquitious in U.S. airports, but there are almost none here. So it’s a nice place to hang.

During the flight I watched Dog Day Afternoon (’75), and spotted “Tony Lip” — i.e., Anthony Vallelonga, the real-life character who was portrayed by Viggo Mortensen in Green Book. Dog Day Lip is playing a plainclothes detective. He’s glimpsed at the end of the climactic JFK tarmac sequence, or right after John Cazale‘s “Sal” has been shot in the forehead by Lance Henricksen. (Spoiler!).

My Norweigan flight (Boeing 787) to Stockholm leaves at 6 pm, but I’ll be leaving for LAX at 3 pm. I like to arrive early so I can get a little filing done in the lounge. Update: Left at 3:30, traffic was ghastly, arrived at Bradley terminal 100 minutes before flight time.

The flight leaves at 3 am Stockholm time, and arrives at Stockhom- at 1:35 pm local time — 10 and 1/2 hours. Four and a half hours later the Nice flight leaves Stockholm, and arrives at 9 pm Sunday (or 12 noon Los Angeles time). A grand total of 18 hours. Horrific.

Seven topics to write about at LAX and on the plane:

(a) Knock Down The House and Alexandra Occasio Cortez‘s not-good-looking, carrot-haired, beardo boyfriend;

(b) Echoes in the Canyon;

(c) Bad Biden “middle of the road” climate change thinking;

(d) HBO’s Chernobyl;

(e) Zac Efron‘s chilling performance as Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile;

(f) The only way I can stand Los Angeles, arguably the ugliest city in the world architecturally (along with Honolulu and three or four others), is to stay indoors in the day and hang out at night in certain soothing, semi-fragrant, aesthetically pleasing pockets; otherwise the ugliness would smother my soul;

(g) My home town of Westfield, New Jersey, where I spent my childhood and early high-school years, hasn’t substantially changed — it looks more or less that same as when I was nine years old. Likewise a Tuscan village called San Donato, which I’ve been visiting off and on for 18 years, has barely changed during that time. Ditto many portions of Paris, Rome and Hanoi. A few small changes but not many. Too bad the world can’t follow suit. Why do populations and economies always have to grow? Why don’t parents just replace themselves instead of creating super-broods?

The late Alvin Sargent was one of Hollywood’s finest and classiest 20th Century screenwriters, especially in the realm of adult relationship dramas. On the same level as Bo Goldman, William Goldman, Ben Hecht, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, David Rayfiel, Paul Schrader, Robert Towne, etc. Ordinary People was the peak, but the runners-up were The Sterile Cuckoo (’69), Paper Moon (’73), Julia (’77), Straight Time (’78, w/ Jeffrey Boam), Dominick and Eugene (’88), Hero (’92 w/ Laura Ziskin and David Webb Peoples) and Unfaithful (w/ William Broyles Jr. — ’02). Toward the end of his career Sargent wrote or co-wrote three or four Spider Man scripts. Alas, his kind of movie had fallen out of favor and paychecks were there for the taking.