The night before last I caught Eli Roth and Joe Carnahan‘s Death Wish. I didn’t completely despise it. I chortled two or three times. The performances by Bruce Willis and Vincent D’Onofrio are reasonably decent. But it’s not my idea of really well-written (they should have stayed with Joe Carnahan’s original 2015 script), and is therefore not very believable. I was sitting there going “fake, oversold, uhn-uh, nope, bullshit, not right, cliche, sloppy,” etc.

But at the same time it was occasionally competent enough to make me wonder if Death Wish might improve its game, at least during the first act. It never did. It’s mainly a fantasy wallow for righties and NRA enthusiasts and lost-in-their-own-realm LexG-types, and one that constantly nudge-nudges those who are already in the pro-gun camp.

It’s certainly not as precise or zeitgeisty as Michael Winner and Charles Bronson‘s 1974 Death Wish (exploitation films work better if they dial it down and take their time in delivering the payoff moments). It’s nowhere near as good as the first John Wick (’14), and not as occasionally satisfying as Antoine Fuqua‘s The Equalizer (ditto), which was otherwise a second-rater.

There’s a place in my head for top-tier rightwing action flicks about showing no mercy to scurvy bad guys. I still say the all-time best in this realm is Tony Scott‘s Man on Fire (’04), and for reasons far too numerous to list here.

The most important thing to remember if you’re going to make one of these things is to (a) avoid happy-family cliches and (b) stay away from trying to message the audience with thin slices of conservative theology. Death Wish flubs it on both counts.

Its first-act depiction of the family life of Chicago-based surgeon Paul Kersey (Willis, married to Elizabeth Shue‘s Lucy Rose and about to send Camila Morrone‘s Jordan off to college) is way too alpha and serene. This will come as a shock to Roth and Carnahan, but real-life families occasionally irritate or bore each other, and sometimes they even argue. And then comes an “oh, please!” when Willis asks a friend of Jordan’s what book she’s reading, and she says it’s a school assignment, and that the author is Milton Friedman, the conservative economist who advised Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. (I don’t remember if she mentioned a title, but it was probably “Capitalism and Freedom.”) I wonder if this scene is from Carnahan’s original screenplay or what.

I understand why Roth’s film is set in Chicago, which is regarded as the most gun-violent city in the U.S. right now (despite the fact that on a per-capita basis Chicago’s murder rate was lower last year than that of seven other cities). But Roth is trying to sell the idea that wealthy suburbanites (like Willis’s Kersey) are living under siege conditions, and that feels to me like an NRA fantasy. (My limited understanding is that the vast majority of Chicago’s gun deaths have occured in the city’s unruly south side.)

I’m a Taylor Sheridan fan as far as it goes (respected and admired Wind River without actually “liking” it), so I can’t come up with any reason to not be at least marginally interested in Sheridan’s Yellowstone (6.20.18). The ten-episode western series (rich cattle rancher, family issues, violent altercations) was written by Sheridan. Kevin Costner, Wes Bentley, Kelly Reilly, Luke Grimes, Danny Huston, Cole Hauser, Gretchen Mol, Jill Hennessy, Patrick St. Esprit, etc. Do I have a Paramount Network app on my Roku box? Can’t be an issue to get one.

I’m already feeling miserable over the apparent likelihood that the weather may be chilly and wet during tomorrow’s Spirit Awards ceremony in Santa Monica. I’m also feeling glum over the distinct possibility that Jordan Peele‘s Get Out will beat Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name for the Best Feature prize. (I’m clinging to the fact that Guadagnino’s film won big-time at last November’s Gotham Awards, which may be a harbinger of Spirit thinking.) I’m presuming either Peele or Guadagnino will take the Best Director trophy. CMBYN‘s Timothee Chalamet and Lady Bird‘s Saoirse Ronan will presumably win the Best Actor and Best Actress award, but what do I know? Here’s hoping Lady Bird‘s Laurie Metcalf wins for Best Supporting Actress, and that Geremy Jasper‘s Patti Cake$, a Sundance breakout that made almost no money, takes the Best First Feature award. I’m playing the rest by ear.

For the seventh time, the Oscar Wilde Awards were celebrated at JJ Abrams‘ Bad Robot last night. Good people (Mark Hamill, Colin Farrell, Kathy Griffin, Martin Short, Diane Keaton, Barry Keoghan, Catherine O’Hara), warm vibe, nice speeches, tasty hors d’oeuvres, etc. But why didn’t Saoirse Ronan and Martin McDonagh show up?

The event was organized by US-Ireland Alliance honcho TrinaVargo, and was moderated by Abrams. It was too cold to hold the event outside (which has been the norm in years past), so everyone was crammed inside. Crowded as hell but no worries. Everyone spoke amusingly for two or three minutes. The Academic performed after the speeches.

The most moving portion of the evening happened during a reading of two poems — “The Bell and the Blackbird” and “Just Beyond Yourself” — by David Whyte.

Thanks again to JJ for the invite. May God abandon His/Her posture of neutrality and indifference and in so doing love and protect the Irish forever. I’m English (visit the village of Wells, Somerset some day) but my first thought when I visited Ireland in ’88 was “I could die here.”

I recorded a discussion a couple of hours ago with Jordan Ruimy. 78 minutes. Jordan’s insect anntennae are telling him that Jordan Peele‘s Get Out will pull off “the upset to end all upsets” when it comes to the Best Picture Oscar. I say “nah.” Peele’s only real shot is possibly winning Best Original Screenplay, despite most oddsmakers betting that Martin McDonagh‘s Three Billboards has this award in the bag.

But if Get Out wins…well, there will no joy in HE Mudville, I can tell you that. There will be, in fact, a great weeping and pulling of hair and refrigerator-punching…a great bellowing howl that will stand up to the legendary wailings of John Lennon during his primal scream period. If this happens I’m going to tap something out for the column but I’ll also record some thoughts verbally and post the mp3 as a form of post-traumatic therapy.

All I know is that apart from the sentimental embarassments (Chicago, The King’s Speech, The Artist, The Greatest Show on Earth, Driving Miss Daisy, Around The World in 80 Days), the idea behind any Best Picture selection is to somehow self-define, to capture cultural echoes, to say “this is a piece of who and what we are right now…not a profound summary of our contadictory drives and longings, but at least a partial reflection of same.”

This spotty, imperfect but occasionally honorable tradition will come under question if Peele’s film, a “trite get-whitey movie…a mixture of Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner and Meet The Fockers with B-level horror” (per Harmin’ Armond), takes the big prize.

If an emissary from the future had pulled me aside as I walked out of a Get Out screening at the Pacific Grove on 2.24.17 and said, “Jeff, you don’t know me from Adam and you obviously don’t have to trust me, but I’m telling you that a year from now Get Out is going to be a leading Best Picture contender, and may even win come March 4th, 2018″…if someone had looked me in the eye and said that in all sincerity I would have said “no offense, brah, but I really, really don’t think so.”

It turns out Oscar telecast producers Mike DeLuca and Suzanne Todd liked my notion about bringing back Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway to present an Academy Award on Sunday, only they’ve done me one better.

TMZ reported last night that Beatty and Dunaway will in fact present the Best Picture Oscar at the ceremony’s conclusion and, not as my “Mickey One” piece suggested, a “minor” award “for dignity’s sake.”

Excerpt: “[TMZ’s] Oscar sources tell us Warren and Faye both just showed up at the Dolby Theatre and rehearsed the big moment. We’re told they were shuffled onstage together very quickly to run through their bit. They went through their lines twice. She began by saying, ‘Presenting is better the second time around.’ Beatty followed up with, ‘The winner is Gone with the Wind. We’re told the writers are still putting finishing touches on their lines.”

Calling, please, for more show-stopping rants in which an offended party lets the offender have it in spades. Preferably with video clip attached. For me, nothing beats Steve Martin‘s brutal vivisection of John Candy in Planes, Trains & Automobiles (’87), but it’s all a matter of taste.

I regret blowing off a 7 pm screening of A Wrinkle Of Time at Disney tonight, but I’d rather attend J.J. Abrams‘ annual Oscar Wilde awards at Bad Robot. Then I’ll catch a 9:30 or 10 pm screening of Eli Roth and Bruce Willis‘s Death Wish at the Arclight or Grove. Yes, that’s right — MGM flacks wouldn’t invite me to a screening. 5:22 pm update: I’ve just returned from picking up my Spirit Awards press pass at Ginsberg-Libby.

Not long after Elvis Presley died of a drug overdose in August 1977, the blunt-spoken John Lennon told a reporter that Presley “died in 1958, when he went into the Army.” There were, in fact, two Elvis Presleys, but the better of the two was elbowed and suffocated early on — career pressures, tumbling tides, you-tell-me-what-else.

The one that mattered was Elvis #1 — a rip-roaring cultural force of the mid ’50s, a slender and sideburned Memphis native who exuded a pulsing sexual energy and totally ruled the rock ‘n’ roll roost from early ’56 to March of ’58 (when he began his two-year military hitch) and who made five half-decent films — Love Me Tender, Loving You, Jailhouse Rock, King Creole and Flaming Star.

Elvis #2 was an in-and-outer and mostly a sell-out, the star of a series of appalling, ridiculous Hollywood films, a yokel who didn’t like the counterculture and the antiwar left, and thereafter became a flamboyant conservative who paid President Nixon an obsequious visit in December ’70, and then a flashy, entourage-flanked Las Vegas headliner, and finally a bloated, grotesque, drug-taking, peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwich-consuming, on-the-verge-of-death wreck of his former self.

The apparent aim of this three-hour, two-part HBO movie, directed by Thom Zimny and debuting on 4.14, is to portray Presley as a serious, aspirational, hard-working artist during his slow-decline period (’58 to ’77). Maybe there’s more to this era than is commonly known, but…okay, I’ll watch it and see what goes.

I smelled bullshit the instant that I read a claim by N.Y. Times White House reporter Maggie Haberman that Hope Hicks‘ decision to resign (a) had nothing to do with her House Intelligence Committee testimony (i.e., “I’ve told white lies”) and (b) that she’d been planning to leave for “months“. (Hicks only took the White House Communications Director job six months ago — 8.27.17 — when Anthony Scaramucci left.) The general belief out there is that Haberman is a stenographer for the Trump White House. Sure seems that way.