“Theron Rules in Slight Tully,” filed from Sundance Film Festival on 1.26.18: “Tully is a much better film than Reitman’s underwhelming Labor Day and his disastrously received Men, Women & Children, so it’s an image-burnisher to some degree. But it’s also on the slight side.

“Cody’s script is amusingly sharp and sardonic, and Theron’s portrayal of Marlo, a stressed suburban mom coping with pregnancy and child care, is her boldest since playing an alcoholic writer in Reitman and Cody’s Young Adult (’11) and her most Raging Bull-ish performance since Monster (’03), lumbering around Tully with her Aileen Wournos bod.

“Theron’s performance is angry, open-hearted, prickly, lived-in.

“Tully (Focus Features, 4.20) is partly a family-unit sitcom and partly a tricky psychological drama. It mostly takes place in a New York-area suburban home occupied by Marlo, her husband Drew (Ron Livingston) and their three kids — a special-needs six year-old boy, a slightly younger girl and a just-born infant.

“It’s one of those stories that (a) portrays a problem and then (b) introduces an outsider who not only makes things better but becomes a kind of magic healer. The question is how this agreeable situation will pan out in the long run.

“With Drew barely paying attention to the kid-rearing situation, focusing on his job during the day and playing video games at night, pregnant Marlo is exhausted — whipped — by maternal responsibilities. And then the baby arrives and the burden is even more crushing with middle-of-the-night feedings and wailings and whatnot.

“So Marlo’s rich brother (Mark Duplass) tries to persuade her to accept the gratis services of a night nanny — a younger woman who will drop by in the evening and take care of the baby so that Marlo can get some much-needed shut-eye.

“Marlo initially resists the idea (even with Duplass offering to cover costs) but eventually she succumbs.

“A night or two later the slightly eccentric Tully (Mackenzie Davis) knocks on the door. Marlo finds her a bit weird at first and a little young for the job, but Tully, a seasoned nanny, gradually gains her trust, and then her friendship and affection.

Principal photography on Michael Mayer‘s The Seagull (Sony Pictures Classics, 5.11) began on 6.29.15. I love anything and everything written by Anton Chekhov, but something obviously didn’t pan out with this puppy or it would’ve opened sometime in ’16 or at least ’17. 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? I last saw The Seagull on the B’way stage in ’08 (Kristin Scott Thomas, Peter Sarsgaard, Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, etc.). before that I saw at the Public Theatre in ’80 with Chris Walken as Trigorin.

I’ve been spitballing 2018 releases for several weeks, but now I’m attempting to focus on films that will probably stand out in terms of great reviews, Best Picture nominations and award campaigns.

It’s now March 6th — less than six months away from the start of the ’18/’19 award season. And right now (stop me if you’ve read this before) eight films are the leading Best Picture hotties — Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman, Adam McKay‘s Back Seat, Damien Chazelle‘s First Man, Barry Jenkins‘ If Beale Street Could Talk, Bryan Singer‘s Bohemian Rhapsody, Bjorn Runge‘s The Wife, Mimi Leder‘s On The Basis of Sex, and Josie Rourke and Beau Willimon‘s Mary, Queen of Scots. (8)

Tell me which others should be included….please. Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadatte? Terrence Malick‘s Radegund? Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner? Felix von Groeningen‘s Beautiful Boy? Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Favourite (reign of Queen Anne in early 17th Century)? Joel Edgerton‘s Boy Erased starring Lucas Hedges? (6)

Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman (Netflix).

Saoirse Ronan in Mary, Queen of Scots.

Director Barry Jenkins (l.) during filming of If Beale Street Could Talk.

Felicity Jones (l.), Armie Hammer (r.) during filming of Mimi Leder’s On The Basis of Sex.

Upmarket Genre: 1. Luca Guadagnino‘s Suspiria (Dakota Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth); 2..Steve McQueen‘s Widows (Viola Davis, Cynthia Erivo, Andre Holland, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, Daniel Kaluuya, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell); 3. Ron Howard‘s Solo — A Star Wars Story (Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton); 4. Lynne Ramsay‘s You Were Never Really Here; 5. 20. Stefania Solluima‘s Soldado (Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Catherine Keener — Columbia, 6.29.18).; 6. Steven Spielberg‘s Ready Player One (Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, T. J. Miller, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance); 7. Jennifer Kent‘s The Nightingale (19th Century Australian revenge saga) w/ Aisling Franciosi, Baykali Ganambarr, Sam Claflin, Damon Herriman, Ewen Leslie. (8)

Likeliest Best Foreign Language Feature Contenders: Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma (Marina de Tavira, Marco Graf, Yalitza Aparicio, Daniela Demesa, Enoc Leaño, Daniel Valtierra); Asghar Farhadi‘s Todos lo saben (Spanish-language drama w/ Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Barbara Lennie, Ricardo Darin, Inma Cuesta, Eduard Fernandez Javier Camara);Laszlo Nemes‘ Sunset (a young girl grows up to become a strong and fearless woman in Budapest before World War I), w/ Susanne Wuest, Vlad Ivanov, Björn Freiberg; Paolo Sorrentino‘s Loro (life of Silvio Berlusconi); Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s The Wild Pear Tree, and Olivier Assayas‘ E-book. (6)

Possible Strongos: Jacques Audiard‘s The Sisters Brothers (Jake Gyllenhaal, Joaquin Phoenix, Rutger Hauer, Riz Ahmed, John C. Reilly); Felix von Groeningen‘s Beautiful Boy with Steve Carell and Timothy Chalamet; Xavier Dolan‘s The Death and Life of John F. Donovan (Kit Harington, Natalie Portman, Jessica Chastain, Susan Sarandon, Kathy Bates); Spike Lee‘s Black Klansman (John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, Corey Hawkins — Focus Features). (4)

There’s one reason why there’s no decent Bluray of Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby‘s The Thing From Another World (’51), and that’s because 97% of those who support the Bluray/streaming market care only about John Carpenter’s 1982 version. The Carpenter is cool but I’ve seen it twice in my entire life (partly because the physical effects suck), and I’ve watched the Hawks/Nyby at least 15 or 20 times. I think this many have something to do with the latter’s social-political undercurrent (early ’50s paranoia about commies and flying saucers) plus that wonderful overlapping Hawks dialogue.

In any event I was about to complain again about the absence of a Hawks/Nyby Bluray (don’t even mention the discredited Japanese disc) when lo and lo and behold I discovered that an HD streaming version of the ’51 version (and running a full 86 minutes) is now available to rent or buy. In my book that’s as good as a Bluray — problem solved.

3:20 pm update: Forget it! I’ve just looked at the Amazon high-def version and some ignorant asshole decided to crop this 1.37 film at 16 x 9. Amazon occasionally sells/rents films with the wrong a.r. and this is one such occasion.

Comfort shoes, hyper reality, dust in the air, love handles, etc.

I can’t believe I lowered myself into the steaming booger vat of The Bachelor last night. Arie Luyendyk, Jr. struck me as an unregenerate hound who masks this tendency with sensitive tearful conveyances and EMO moments. And I really hate it when someone takes forever to lower the boom on a significant other with a clean and declarative “we’re done for now”, especially when they convey exactly what’s on their mind with an endless series of non-verbal signals. The payoff line is Becca’s “are you fucking kidding me?” and the editors bleeped it?

I can’t express sincere enthusiasm about a film directed by Rob Marshall, who has given me so much pain over the years. And I’m already having trouble with the idea of the Puerto Rican-descended Lin-Manuel Miranda playing a “lamplighter” (and apprentice to Dick Van Dyke‘s “Bert” from the original 1964 version) in 1930s London. But I love watching Emily Blunt‘s Mary Poppins descend from 5,000 feet in the foggy overhead, and I admire the damp outdoorsy atmosphere conveyed by John Myhre‘s production design and Dion Beebe‘s cinematography. So there’s hope.

On 10.12.13 I posted about a 1949 film that won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best [Adapted] Screenplay, and was nominated for Best Picture:

Yesterday I watched Fox Home Video’s Bluray of Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s A Letter To Three Wives (’49), which I first saw…oh, sometime in my teens. Even in that early stage of aesthetic development I remember admiring the brilliant writing and especially the way it pays off.

Nominally it’s a woman’s drama about whose husband (Jeanne Crain‘s, Linda Darnell‘s or Ann Sothern‘s) has run away with sophisticated socialite Addie Ross, who narrates the film from time to time (the voice belongs to Celeste Holm) but is never seen. But that’s just the story or the clothesline upon which Wives hangs its real agenda. For this is primarily an examination of social mores, values and ethics among middle-class marrieds of late 1940s America.

Over and over the film reminds you how long ago this was. Southern is fairly liberated in the sense that she’s the main breadwinner in her household; her husband, played by Kirk Douglas, is a more-or-less penniless schoolteacher. One of the film’s quaint highlights is Douglas’s cocktail party rant against the dishonest and vulgar hucksterism of commercial radio. This was a valid point, I’m sure, from Mankiewicz’s perspective 60-plus years ago, but if Joe could see the world now…

But I’d really forgotten how effective the ending is. It’s partly the surprise admission from Paul Douglas (as Darnell’s wealthy, somewhat crude businessman husband) that it was he and not Craine’s husband Brad (written by Mankiewicz as a bland and patronizing type, and certainly played that way by Jeffrey Lynn) who ran off with Addie. But what really got me is the final bit when Douglas and Darnell hit the dance floor and the camera drops down to the table and suddenly Addie is a spirit of some kind — a spectral force.

All through the film Addie has been the absent “other” and suddenly she’s a spook who tips over a champagne glass and breaks it. A metaphor for disappointment and defeat, sure, but I find it fascinating that Mankiewicz would shoot Wives as a thoroughly dialogue-driven, medium-interior, right-down-the-middle relationship drama and then, at the very last second, change the rules and turn it into Topper or The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. That’s a surprise ending in spades.

Congratulations to Fox Home Video’s Schawn Belston and his restoration team for managing a superb upgrade of this classic. I’ve never seen it look so rich and clean and dynamically alive.

This morning Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone declared that Guillermo del Toro‘s The Shape of Water “is one of the best films to win the Best Picture Oscar in two decades. It joins the ranks of the best of the best, like No Country for Old Men, The Departed and The Hurt Locker, and perhaps ushers in a new decade of films that will flourish under America’s sudden turn to the dark side.”

The Shape of Water is a partly gentle, partly porno-violent fairy-tale about loneliness and longing and fish-sex, but it’s a genre film and therefore a curio in the annals of Best Picture winners, and it damn sure isn’t one of “the best of the best.” Sasha is crazy for comparing it to The Departed or No Country For Old Men….good God! The Movie Godz don’t read everything but they read Hollywood Elsewhere, and I can tell you they’ll shriek like banshees when they read her piece. And I mean like Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice when Geena Davis tries to say his name three times: “Eeeeeeeeeee!!!”

The Shape of Water is the only creature fantasy to seriously contend for a Best Picture Oscar, much less win one. (Right?) It’s a trans-species love story that cares about the interior lives of marginal people and whatnot, but I’m writing about it now because it’s first and foremost an aberration — a film that won largely because of the New Academy Kidz and their clenched determination to include genre films in the realm of Best Picture consideration, and in so doing shake things up.

I’ve long disagreed with the Academy prejudice that comedies can’t be regarded with the same respect afforded to socially realistic dramas, but there’s no denying that genre films have worked hard for decades at defying general laws of believability and credibility with a kind of “fuck it, we’re a genre movie” attitude.

I’m not talking about scary or horrific films but those which deal their cards according to pulpy, fast-and-loose rules. (Like The Shape of Water.) And I’m saying this, mind, as one who would have completely respected King Kong or Psycho or Val Lewton‘s Cat People or The Night of the Hunter being handed a Best Picture Oscar.

Unlike almost every other Best Picture winner except for six or seven I’d rather not mention, The Shape of Water is more or less indifferent to the world that we’re all unfortunately stuck with, and is a creation that totally resides in Guillermo’s head.

It contemplates nothing except for the eternal condition of loneliness and the need to be loved and the balm of compassion, which we all value. But at the same time it’s not that great because of staggering plot holes and logic flaws. It’s a creature feature that believes in kindness and compassion, yes, and is “completely dominated and in fact saturated with its Guillermo-ness,” as I said last September. But “the best of the best”?

Variety reported two months ago that Guillermo del Toro and Sunset Gun‘s Kim Morgan are co-writing a remake of Nightmare Alley, a 1947 film noir that even its biggest fans (and they are relatively few in number) would describe as decidedly bizarre if not grotesque.

The handsomely produced 20th Century Fox film starred Tyrone Power as a sociopathic carnival barker who rises and falls in sordid, appalling fashion, and ends up returning to the carnival realm as a geek who bites the heads off chickens.

Stuart Gordon‘s Trailers From Hell assessment sums it up nicely, and I’m all for films that cater to people with perverse tastes in downswirl melodrama. But the original Edmund Goulding-directed film died at the box-office for a reason.

If Guillermo and Kim’s script closely adheres to the 71-year-old Jules Furthman screenplay or to William Lindsay Gresham‘s 1946 novel (which arose from conversations Gresham had “with a former carnival worker while they were both serving as volunteers with the Loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War”**), look out. At best this will be a film festival darling (Telluride’s Tom Luddy will wet himself) and not much else.

Kim Morgan, Guillermo del Toro prior to last night’s Oscar telecast — I’m getting a Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera vibe.

There’s a hunger-for-fame virus infecting the populace, and Terry Bryant is the latest victim. This ayehole stole Frances McDormand‘s Oscar last night during the Governors Ball after-party. Bryant posted a Facebook video of himself boasting about winning (““Lookee, baby…this is mine…my team got this tonight”) and smooching the statuette. Then he allegedly tried to use the Oscar to gain entrance to the Vanity Fair after-party, and that’s where he was busted. McDormand reportedly told authorities to let him skate, which I personally interpret as “this guy is insane…this is about mental health…this episode can’t be sufficiently addressed by the criminal justice system.”