Last night I saw Morgan Neville‘s Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (Focus Features, 6.8) — a quiet little caress of a film that leaves you with all kinds of alpha vibes. It was warmly and lovingly reviewed during the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, by no less than 27 critics. And for good cause. A 94-minute doc about Fred Rogers and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, it currently has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 96%. But people who didn’t attend that Park City festival or who did but missed it anyway (like me) are being asked to hold their reviews until the week after next.

Here, at least, are two clips that stood out for me. The first shows Rogers’ May 1969 appearance before a Senate committee headed by Sen. John Pastore, in an attempt to secure public-television funding. The second is Eddie Murphy‘s SNL parody skit, “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood.”

French helmer Jacques Audiard (The Beat That My Heart Skipped, A Prophet, Rust and Bone, Dheepan) has never embraced a jaded, fuck-around attitude — he’s always been a fairly solemn, straightforward filmmaker. But he’s adopted a jaunty, mock-ironic, Coen-esque approach for The Sisters Brothers (Annapurna), a western set during the California Gold Rush. John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix as Eli and Charlie Sisters; costarring Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rutger Hauer and Carol Kane. Pic will open sometime in October or November.

“If Cormac McCarthy had a sense of humor, he might have concocted a story like Patrick DeWitt’s bloody, darkly funny western The Sisters Brothers…[DeWitt has] a skillfully polished voice and a penchant for gleefully looking under bloody bandages.” — Los Angeles Times blurb about the 2011 source novel.

Morgan Freeman is under fire this morning for having allegedly behaved in a sexually inappropriate, harassing or goading manner with no fewer than eight women. It’s all in a CNN report by Chloe Melas and An Phung, posted just after 8 am Pacific. The eight women were contacted as a result of a “months-long” investigation.

This effort was triggered after Melas herself “was subjected to inappropriate behavior by Freeman more than a year ago, when she interviewed him at a press junket for Going in Style,” according to the article. A complaint was pressed via human resource staffers at CNN and Warner Bros., but the response was minimal. So Melas turned up the heat. Excerpt: “After the encounter with Freeman, Melas started making calls to see if other women had experienced anything similar, or whether this was an isolated incident. She soon learned that other women had similar stories — and so she, and later her co-author, began this months-long reporting process.”

Freeman’s response: “Anyone who knows me or has worked with me knows I am not someone who would intentionally offend or knowingly make anyone feel uneasy. I apologize to anyone who felt uncomfortable or disrespected — that was never my intent.”

Morgan Freeman

Posts about Moses Farrow’s self-published essay (“A Son Speaks Out“), which casts serious shade upon Mia Farrow as well as Dylan Farrow‘s accusation of molestation against Woody Allen, began appearing roughly six hours ago, or around noon Pacific. I just want everyone to recognize that Movie City News, which is always fairly Johnny-on-the-spot when a story breaks, hasn’t posted a link to Moses’ essay over the last six-plus hours. No tweet link, no comment…zip. Just saying.

5.24, 8:10 am: MCN finally posts a link — “A Son Speaks,” Writes Moses Farrow. If there’s bounce or intrigue of any kind in a story, MCN will typically post an excerpt. Not this time. They’ve posted the absolute bare minimum, sans comment. HE guess: They don’t want to be seen as burying their heads in the sand, but also fear being perceived as “we believe Dylan” contrarians.

Even the semi-informed have known for some time that Moses Farrow, the adopted son of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, has been dismissive of sister Dylan Farrow‘s claim about Woody having molested her in August 1992, and also disparaging of Mia for having been a highly intimidating control freak when he and his siblings were young.

Today Moses reiterated these views in a self-published essay titled “A Son Speaks Out.” He again questioned Dylan, defended his father, and claimed his mother was abusive towards him and his siblings.

Near the end of Moses’ essay: “To those who have become convinced of my father’s guilt, I ask you to consider this: In this time of #MeToo, when so many movie heavyweights have faced dozens of accusations, my father has been accused of wrongdoing only once, by an enraged ex-partner during contentious custody negotiations. During almost 60 years in the public eye, not one other person has come forward to accuse him of even behaving badly on a date, or acting inappropriately in any professional situation, let alone molesting a child.

“As a trained professional, I know that child molestation is a compulsive sickness and deviation that demands repetition. Dylan was alone with Woody in his apartment countless times over the years without a hint of impropriety, yet some would have you believe that at the age of 56, he suddenly decided to become a child molester in a house full of hostile people ordered to watch him like a hawk.

“To the actors who have worked with my father and have voiced regret for doing so: You have rushed to join the chorus of condemnation based on a discredited accusation for fear of not being on the ‘right’ side of a major social movement.” Are you listening, Timothy Chalamet and Greta Gerwig?

“But rather than accept the hysteria of Twitter mobs, mindlessly repeating a story examined and discredited 25 years ago, please consider what I have to say. After all, I was there — in the house, in the room — and I know both my father and mother and what each is capable of a whole lot better than you.”

Dylan has called the essay “an attempt to deflect from a credible allegation made by an adult woman, by trying to impugn my mother who has only ever been supportive of me and my siblings.”

I honestly don’t remember very much about Franklin Schaffner‘s Papillon (’73), save for the fact that it starred Steve McQueen (as the real-life Henri Charriere) and Dustin Hoffman (as Louis Dega).

The two things I do remember: (a) it was generally a tough haul with all the cruelty, beatings and isolation suffered by the main characters, and (b) I was left with a feeling of enormous letdown at the finale. As McQueen apparently floats away from Devil’s Island on a small handmade raft, a narrator informs that Charriere made it to civilization, wasn’t re-arrested and lived the rest of his life as a free soul. As an audience member I wanted to taste this freedom as badly as Charriere did, and it felt unfair to end the film during his final escape attempt. It needed a denouement showing McQueen in a beachside hammock, staring at the sunset with a pretty wife nearby and maybe a drink in his hand.

Michael Noer‘s Papillon (Bleecker Street, 8.24) stars Charlie Hunnam as McQueen/Charriere and Rami Malek as Hoffman/Dega.

NFL honcho Roger Goodell to NFL players: “I’m not condemning your kneeling protests, but I don’t want you to do them.” Earth to Goodell: Saluting the anthem and the flag offers collateral support for the current White House occupant, and that’s a no-go.

NFL players can hang in the locker room during the national anthem, but if they “take a knee” on the field their teams will be fined. Players had previously been required to be visible during the anthem. Goodell said this morning that owners voted unanimously to roll that rule back and to fine teams if the on-field players fail to “show respect for the flag and the anthem.”

Trailers for ’50s monster movies often used hyperbole and sensationalism, but even by these standards the trailer for The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas, a 1957 Hammer horror film, was comically over-the-top. The narration and especially the narrator’s style of delivery are so purple it’s hard to imagine that the marketing team was attempting a sincere sell. I’ve never seen the actual film, but apparently it wasn’t that bad. Director Val Guest came from comedy, but he also directed the highly respectable The Day The Earth Caught Fire. Wiki page excerpt: “Guest felt that the Yeti should be kept largely offscreen, bar a few glimpses of hands and arms, leaving the rest to the audience’s imagination [whereas screenwriter] Nigel Kneale felt that the creatures should be shown in their entirety to get across the message of the script that the Yeti are harmless, gentle creatures.”

After making so many outrageous crap-level movies, how can Dwayne Johnson expect to seriously compete as a Republican presidential candidate in 2024? Won’t voters resent him for appearing in nothing but shit-level “entertainments” for so many years? Compared to Johnson Arnold Schwarzenegger was Laurence Olivier by the time he began running for California governor in the early aughts. The Terminator, Predator, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, True Lies, Eraser, Batman and Robin — Schwarzenegger was a mainstream action star, but at least he made a few semi-respectable films. Johnson just wants to parade around and make dough.

Imagine there’s an actual sentient God — a universal, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-controlling glowforce with His/Her finger on the button of absolutely everything, and Ethan Hawke‘s Reverend Toller comes over, sits down, takes a swig of whiskey and asks, “Will you forgive us for what we’ve done to this world? Will you cut humankind a break for polluting and greenhouse-gassing and over-developing so much of your good green paradise?”

God would take a breath, clear his throat, take Toller’s hand, look him in the eye and say, “Forgive in what way? Even if I felt like forgiving, what good would it do? It’s a crazy question. Century after century humans have asked it, and the answer has never changed: “I don’t forgive. I never have and I never will. There’s only one rule of the physical universe, and you’ve been hearing it since you were just a proverbial knee-high. As you sow, so shall you reap. And you know what that means.

“Put another way, I’m not in this. It’s your planet. If you want to flood your low-lying cities with sea water and turn the green verdant hills into toxic waste dumps, knock yourselves out. You’ll be ruining the lives of your grandchildren and especially your great-grandchildren, of course, but fuck ’em, right? The fact that you can’t see any farther than the tip of your own nose is not my affair. I’m not a judge or a referee or even a landlord. You want the real truth? I don’t even exist. Okay, I shouldn’t have said that. That was raw. I’m sorry. I blurt stuff out.”

Paul Dano‘s Wildlife (IFC Films, 10.19) is a sluggish but strongly directed middle-class horror film — cold, creepy, perverse. I didn’t hate it because of Dano’s visual discipline (handsome compositions, a restrained shooting style, extra-scrupulous 1960 period design) and because of Carey Mulligan‘s fascinating performance as a youngish cheating mom in a small Montana town. But it’s a funereal gloom movie, and it makes you feel like you’re sinking into a cold swamp.

On top of which I was appalled — astonished — by the cruel, self-destructive behavior of this sad 34 year-old woman, whose name is Jeanette, and particularly by her decision to invite her 14 year-old son Joe (Ed Oxenbould) to almost participate in some extra-marital humping with a rich, small-town fat guy (Bill Camp) while her irresponsible husband Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) is off fighting a forest fire with local volunteers.

Yes, the screenplay (by Dano and Zoe Kazan) is an adaptation of a 1990 Richard Ford novel so blame Ford, right? But who dreams up stuff like this? And what kind of mother has ever injected this kind of sexually odious poison into her son’s life?

Infidels hide their affairs, particularly from their kids. But Jeanette more or less whispers in her son’s ear, “I dunno but I kinda like this balding Uriah Heep…he’s rich and definitely not your father, and so I’m feeling flirty and thinking about…well, I’ve said enough.” And the kid just stares at her like she’s some kind of conniving ghoul from a Vincent Price flick. Later she says she’s miserable and almost ready to kill herself, but that doesn’t negate the earlier thing.

So Wildlife is partly admirable, yes, but mostly an endurance test. The feeling of watching it is something like “all right, this is grim and getting grimmer but I can handle it…I certainly love Mulligan and Gyllenhaal’s acting but Oxenbould…the kid is torture. He doesn’t look like Carey or Jake, of course — familial resemblance almost never happens in movies — but he wears the exact same expression in every scene in the film…a look of intimidation, anxiety, quiet horror, shock, dread…every damn scene.”

But Dano knows how to visually compose and hold to a certain austere style, and Mulligan is always peak-level, no matter the role.

From Frank Bruni‘s “Robert Mueller, You’re Starting to Scare Me,” posted on 5.22: “By my reckoning, there’s already proof of attempted obstruction of justice, but that’s receding in a thick fog of collateral nefariousness and a teeming cast of unsavory opportunists. It may also be why Donald Trump’s mantra is ‘no collusion, no collusion, no collusion.’

“Contrary to what his aides reportedly murmur, Trump is no idiot. He knows that if he sets the bar at incontrovertible evidence of him and Putin huddled over a Hillary Clinton voodoo doll, he just might clear it. And he knows that if Americans are fixated on collusion, they aren’t concentrating on much else. That’s good for him and terrible for the country.

“He could be entirely innocent of soliciting or welcoming Russian help and he’d still be a proudly offensive, gleefully divisive, woefully unprepared plutocrat with no moral compass beyond his own aggrandizement. While we obsess over what may be hidden in the shadows, all of that is in plain sight.”