Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria is “the most brilliantly scary film I have ever seen,” actress Jessica Harper wrote on her private Facebook page last weekend. “Luca’s Call Me By Your Name does not prepare you for it, but throws into relief the director’s brilliance and versatility,” she added. Harper has a small role in Suspiria, of course, so she’s not processing the forthcoming Amazon release from an impartial perspective.

I don’t disagree with James Cameron‘s recent claim that the science-fiction genre has long been unfairly dismissed by Academy members as “not humanistic enough, not about real people” and therefore not Oscar-worthy.

When he gave this quote, however, Cameron chose to sidestep the fact that movies haven’t really produced a body of films that could be called science fiction, certainly not by the purist or literary definition of that term. What they’ve invested in is sci-fi fantasy, and more precisely CG-driven pulp-popcorn fantasias based on comic-book superheroes and the “hero’s journey” myth made famous by Joseph Campbell‘s “The Hero With A Thousand Faces.”

For the most part this attitude or approach has resulted in populist sludge that hasn’t begun to warrant serious consideration outside of the Saturn awards.

What Cameron really means, of course, is that a once in a blue moon a sci-fi fantasy flick like Avatar is good enough to be nominated for Best Picture (which it was eight years ago), and that his forthcoming Avatar sequels might warrant the same consideration.

Cameron: “All movies are artifice. Movies are innately artificial. The truth underlies the artifact. The truth of what you’re saying is the connection with the audience. Science-fiction can do that like any other genre. There is science-fiction that plays by the rules of good drama and that is important conceptually and that says something about our society and that has great characters. The Academy just has a blindspot about it. They’ll award it technical stuff but not the real stuff, not the acting.”

Within the last 52 years, there have been two films called Black Klansman that don’t precisely deliver on what the title implies. First and foremost is Spike Lee‘s BlacKkKlansman (inserting the third “k” is arguably the most irritating film-marketing strategy of the 21st Century), which will debut at the soon-to-launch Cannes Film Festival. Second is a 1966 blaxploitation film called The Black Klansman, shot in the Bakersfield area during the 1965 Watts riots and directed by Ted V. Mikels.

As noted a month ago, Lee’s ’70s drama isn’t literally about a black guy joining the Klan but an undercover investigation of the Klan by the real-life Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) when he was the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department.

After initial correspondence with the Klan, Stallworth received a call in which he was asked if he wants to “join our cause.” According to an Amazon summary, “Ron answers the caller’s question that night with a yes, launching what is surely one of the most audacious, and incredible undercover investigations in history. Ron recruits his partner Chuck to play the ‘white’ Ron Stallworth. The “Chuck” character is apparently called “Flip,” and is played by Adam Driver.

This morning I found a reasonable-sounding review of the ’66 Black Klansman on a blog called Scared Shiftless in Shasta.

Key passage: “My expectation was that [The Black Klansman] would be something campy, poorly constructed and/or preachy. To my surprise, it was none of those things, but an earnest, serious treatment of what was clearly exploitation subject matter, but which never elicits any unintended humor. Even with the Victor/Victoria-like mind-melting idea of a white actor playing a black man who pretends to be white, it doesn’t offend or condescend.”

Wiki boilerplate: “Set during the Civil Rights Movement, the film tells the story of an African-American man, Jerry Ellworth (Richard Gilden, a white actor), who is an LA jazz musician with a white girlfriend. Meanwhile, in an Alabama diner, a young black man attempts to exercise his civil rights by sitting at a local diner. When the Ku Klux Klan learn of this, they firebomb a church, killing Jerry’s daughter. When he learns of this, Jerry moves to Alabama to infiltrate the group responsible for his daughter’s death. Jerry dons his disguise and becomes a member of the inner circle, befriending the local leader and his daughter, and soon exacts his revenge.”

The original title of The Black Klansman was I Crossed The Color Line.

In a 5.2 N.Y. Times article called “Dear Movie Industry, We Have Thoughts’, critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis riff on this and that. A diverting enough thing until I came upon Scott’s startling suggestion that anyone offering a historical analogy about today’s near-tyrannical climate of politically correct admonishing is up to no good.

“Please read some history,” he implored. “About the Salem witch trials, the Spanish Inquisition, the martyrdom of early Christians, Joseph McCarthy, Joseph Stalin, the Gestapo, Pol Pot and any of the other historical monsters and catastrophes you like to invoke when talking about whatever is bothering you in contemporary culture. Also please refrain from hyperbolically throwing around words like ‘silencing,’ ‘thought police’ and ‘censorship’ in reference to criticism on social media or elsewhere. People who indulge in this kind of rhetorical inflation are like rats spreading bubonic plague.”

Really? So I can’t use the term “p.c. brownshirts” any longer? And the HE meme about zealous sentiments within the #MeToo and #TimesUp community recalling the mindset of Maximilien Robespierre…that’s no good either?

There’s a slight but horrifying possibility that Donald Trump could actually be re-elected in 2020. One factor that could bring about this nightmare scenario, it seems, is a generally held suspicion among rural bumblefucks that the left has devolved into a culture of p.c. scolding. But there’s nothing to this, right?

A Twitter guy named “32 across” called this piece “the latest installment in the DSCU — the Dargis Scott Critical Universe. Please refer to it that way from now on.”

I for one began to have doubts about the DSCU last June when they posted a “Best Films of the 21st Century” piece and stated that Pete Docter and Ronnie del Carmen‘s Inside Out ranked seventh.

In a century that has celebrated Zodiac, Zero Dark Thirty, Manchester By The Sea, Leviathan, The Wolf of Wall Street, A Separation, The Social Network, No Country For Old Men, Memento, Traffic, Amores perros, United 93, Children of Men, Adaptation, The Lives of Others, Michael Clayton, Almost Famous (the “Untitled” DVD director’s cut), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Collateral, Love & Mercy, Dancer in the Dark, A Serious Man, Girlfight, The Departed, In the Bedroom, Call Me By Your Name, Loveless, Personal Shopper, The Square and The Big Sick, the seventh-best is fucking Inside Out?

Ask any half-thoughtful person if they feel that the post-#MeToo reputations of Harvey Weinstein and Woody Allen are roughly analogous, and they’ll most likely say “hardly…a single, highly disputable allegation is a far cry from several credible accusations of sexual assault and rape.” The fact is that the association persists only in the minds of certain journalists. Claudia Eller’s just-posted Variety interview with Cannes Film Festival jury president Cate Blanchett is a case in point.

Blanchett’s answer to Eller’s tabloid-attitude question (“Would you ever work again with Weinstein or Allen?”) skillfully sidesteps what she seems to actually think, which is “where’s the legal proof in the Allen pudding?” Remember Blanchett’s response to a similar question from CNN’s Christiane Amanpour a few weeks ago? She said that social media is great for raising “awareness about issues,” but it’s “not the judge and jury,” and that if evidence comes to light that warrants prosecution then a prosecution should result, but if the evidence isn’t there…well, you know, maybe the Robespierres should settle down, take a breath and direct their energies elsewhere.

These days the 3rd arrondisement (northern Marais, intersection of rue Bretagne and rue Saintonge) is Hollywood Elsewhere’s favorite Parisian hang zone, but 15 years ago Montmartre (excepting the ghastly tourist section adjacent to Sacre Coeur) was my ground zero. One of the cultural lures of that neighborhood was and still is Studio 28, the nearly century-old repertory cinema on rue Tholoze. George W. Bush was in office the last time I caught a film there, but I’m very glad it’s still viable and thriving and using digital projection, etc. Those eccentric wall lamps designed by Jean Cocteau, the covered courtyard cafe, the literal aroma, the history…it’s Montmartre’s Film Forum. Honestly? I wrote this because I love the below photo, and I didn’t want to post without editorial comment.

Maybe it was unrealistic to hope that Kevin Connolly‘s Gotti (Vertical/Sunrider, 6.15) might aspire to some kind of exceptional, Coppola-like vision or scheme. Something darker, sadder, deeper or grander than just another Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond-type deal.

The Gotti trailer suggests a brisk narrative and most likely a reasonably engaging sit — John Travolta‘s lead performance is obviously carnivorous — but it feels so rote, so familiar, so “is that all there is?” There may be more depth to Gotti than what the trailer is indicating, but right now it feels like run-of-the-mill bullets, bluster, brutality, braggadocio and brain matter.

An AP story is reporting that Gotti will premiere out-of-competition with a special 5.15 gala screening at the Cannes Film Festival.

Sight unseen, Hollywood Elsewhere fully approves. Pocket-drop attitude, vibe. My kind of dry humor. I can tell.

European culture and gourmet cuisine often go hand-in-hand. 11 years ago I happened upon a small family-owned osteria in Rome’s Trastevere district. I can still taste a smallish pasta dish I ordered, served at just the right temperature and bursting with the flavor of fresh tomatoes and odd spices. I also recall wandering around Portofino, a seaside Italian village not far from Cinque Terre, a few years earlier. A bit touristy, but with the usual historical aromas and architectural charms and a warm, wonderful sense of “so glad I’m here…life doesn’t get much better than this.”

I’m mentioning these experiences because last night a friend and I visited Portofino, a respected Italian restaurant in Wilton, Connecticut — the woodsy, whitebread, not-overwhelmingly-liberal town where I went to high school for a couple of years.

It looked inviting from the outside, but I was hit with a big fat “uh-oh” the instant I walked in — three large flatscreens in the bar area showing ESPN. A sports-bar vibe (a general Hollywood Elsewhere no-no) always means “watch it…this may be an okay restaurant, but it’s catering to Ordinary Joes so grim up for some agreeable but unexceptional food.” That’s what we got. Acceptable meh. But with a nice candlelit atmosphere (if you were facing away from the bar area).

This is what upper Fairfield County dining is often about — cushy comfort vibes but minus the sublime flavors, seasonings and sauces. For people willing to settle. Not unpleasant but you’re also thinking “this is not what great servings can and should be — inoffensive but substitute-level.”

A producer friend saw Michael Mayer and Stephen Karam‘s adaptation of The Seagull (Sony Classics, 5.11) yesterday, and was stirred and delighted. Mainly by the performances, she said — Saoirse Ronan, Annette Bening, Elizabeth Moss, Brian Dennehy, Corey Stoll. I replied that (a) it had been mostly well reviewed a few days ago after screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, and that (b) I was sorry I hadn’t received a screening invite.

HE to LA-based SPC publicists (who invited colleagues to a screening and a press day three or four weeks ago): “So I don’t get to review The Seagull in a timely fashion? It opens in 11 days. I worship the play and have seen it performed on stage twice in NYC, so missing out on the film version thus far is unfortunate. I’m in NYC as we speak. Any Manhattan screenings between now and Thursday, 5.4?”

I’m still puzzled by the fact that despite The Seagull having shot in mid ’15, it didn’t hit theatres all during ’16 or ’17. In a smoothly functioning realm it would have played at the ’16 fall festivals and opened sometime in the winter, spring or fall of ’17. As I wrote on 3.16.18, there has to be a reason for that.

Lone-wolf naysayer Jude Fry wrote in his 4.22 Indiewire review that Mayer gussies The Seagull up with too many dolly shots, “like he’s choreographing a Green Day song.” He also said Mayer should have left Chekhov’s original play well enough alone. Nontheless the film currently has a 90% RT approval rating.

Also from 3.18: How could watching Saoirse Ronan, Annette Bening, Corey Stoll, Billy Howle and Elisabeth Moss performing Chekhov’s greatest play…how could that not be a keeper?”

Does it really matter in the greater scheme, much less to the Movie Godz sitting in the shadow of Mount Olympus, if a larger mass of lemmings jumped off the Avengers: Infinity War cliff, and thereby overshadowed the blindly devotional swan dive made by millions of said critters two and a half years ago on behalf of Star Wars: The Force Awakens? Obviously it does to certain parties who will profit in various ways, but somebody needs to say “okay, fine, enjoy the champagne, but what are you actually celebrating?” It was reported this morning that Infinity War‘s $258.2 million opening weekend topped Force Awakens‘ $247.9 million set in December 2015.

It’s hard to think of Michael Imperioli as a gray-haired 52 year-old, given that his Sopranos character, Christopher Moltisanti, is branded into our brains as an angry, undisciplined, emotionally intemperate guy in his early to mid 30s. (Born in ’66, Imperioli was 33 when The Sopranos began airing in ’99, and 41 when it ended in ’07.)

One of Moltisanti’s most noteworthy lines, shouted to Martin Scorsese in front of a hot Manhattan club: “Marty! Kundun…I liked it!”

Seriously, I can just tell that David Chase‘s The Many Saints of Newark, which deals with the Soprano family during the ’67 Newark race riots, is going to amount to something. I can feel it. Great title, Chase knows the turf like the back of his hand, an epic-scale confrontation between cultures. If anyone can toss me a PDF of the script…please.