So all of a sudden and “out of the fucking blue,” as Chris Penn said in Reservoir Dogs, Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) is suddenly a rightwing, pistol-brandishing Trump and NRA guy? We all understood the motive for Charles Bronson‘s Kersey becoming an urban vigilante who drilled bad guys because the cops wouldn’t do their jobs, but when did this activity become quote-unquote patriotic? Or is there something about the plot of Eli Roth’s soon-to-open film (MGM, 3.2) that I haven’t gotten wind of?
Yesterday I marathoned through all four hour-long episodes of David Hare and S.J. Clarkson‘s Collateral, which will begin streaming on Netflix on March 9th.
It’s about a murder, but is not so much a “whodunit” but a “whydunit,” as Hare has said. I’ll leave it there for now.
Carey Mulligan, as Detective Inspector Kip Glaspie, owns this series with quiet, exacting authority. You can read her every thought and current in each and every moment. She’s just a genius at guiding you along and making you root for Kip every step of the way.
Remember how everyone loved Helen Mirren as Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect, the British cop series? Mulligan matches Mirren line for dry line, inflection for inflection, slightly raised eyebrow for slightly raised eyebrow. She’s at the absolute top of her game here.
A BBC Two series, Collateral began airing in England on a sequential episode basis on Monday, 2.12. The fourth episode will air on Monday, 3.5. Netflix will stream all four episodes simultaneously four days later.
HE to Journo Pals, sent this morning: “Has anyone received an invite to Eli Roth and Joe Carnahan‘s Death Wish (MGM/Annapurna, 3.2)? It opens in four days and I haven’t received jack squat.” Journo #1: “Nope.” Journo #2: “Uhhm, no.” Journo #3: “No, but I’m not exactly eager to see it either.”
Word around the campfire says that Carnahan’s 2015 script is better than the rewritten hodgepodge that the film is based upon.
Posted a few weeks ago: I’m not saying the home-invader murderers in Eli Roth and Joe Carnahan‘s remake of Death Wish should be from this or that tribe, but the U.S. is a multicultural society, after all, and it does seem a tiny bit chickenshit that the bad guys are generic white scumbags, or cut from the same cloth as the three invaders (Jeff Goldblum played one of them) in Michael Winner’s 1974 original.
The last four or five minutes of Joel and Ethan Coen‘s A Serious Man is one of the all-time greatest finales of 21st Century cinema, hands down. Because it summarizes the basic ethos of the film — “If God doesn’t like you, you’re fucked and that’s that” — and because the approaching tornado storm is so perfectly ominous. The visual effects maestros were Oliver Arnold, Andy Burmeister and Alexandre Cancado of Luma Pictures.
“Slow Death by Jewish Kiki,” posted on 9.11.09: “Joel and Ethan Coen‘s A Serious Man is a brilliant LQTM black comedy that out-misanthropes Woody Allen by a country mile and positively seethes with contempt for complacent religious culture (in this case ’60s era Minnesota Judaism). I was knocked flat in the best way imaginable and have put it right at the top of my Coen-best list. God, it’s such a pleasure to take in something this acidic and well-scalpeled. The Coens are fearless at this kind of artful diamond-cutting.
“The wickedly funereal tone and lack of stars means it isn’t going to make a dime, but it’s a high-calibre achievement by the most gifted filmmaking brothers of our time, and it absolutely must rank as one of the year’s ten Best Picture nominees when all is said and done. The Academy fudgies will not be permitted to brush this one aside, and if they do there will be torches and pitchforks such as James Whale never imagined at the corner of Wilshire and La Peer.
“The worldview of this maliciously wicked film (which isn’t “no-laugh funny” as much as wicked-bitter-toxic funny, which I personally prize above all other kinds) is black as night, black as a damp and sealed-off cellar. Scene after scene tells us that life is drip-drip torture, betrayal and muted hostility are constants, all manner of bad things (including tornadoes) are just around the corner, your family and neighbors will cluck-cluck as you sink into quicksand, etc.
It’s warm today in Los Angeles — 65 degrees and only 11 am. The cold snap (evening temps in the 40s, which felt like 30s due to winds) is over for now. Soon it’ll be March, and then comes April and May. And then the fifth anniversary of the 6.19.13 death of James Gandolfini. I’m mentioning this because this morning I happened to re-read one of the ugliest comment-thread pile-ons in the history of this column. It followed a plainly-written “this is how it happened” piece about my having “crashed” (in a vague manner of speaking) Gandolfini’s funeral service at Manhattan’s St. John The Divine on 6.27.13.
For two days I was seething with rage while coping with a broken heart. The ugliness amazed me although a few commenters, at least, understood and respected the fact that I attended out of love and respect. Variety‘s Stephen Gaydos said it best in 6.28.13 post: “Wells is a huge [Gandolfini] fan and so he paid his respects to a guy who was talented and died too young. Those are the facts. The rest is cockatoo chatter.”
At the end of a local ABC News report about the funeral[above], the anchor guy states that “the funeral was closed to the press.” The beat-down I received that day was partly about my having claimed that press wasn’t invited (or at least that I wasn’t) and that I had to circumvent stern-looking women with clipboards who were checking names, etc.
Here it is again: “I got hated on big-time for tweeting about having crashed James Gandolfini‘s funeral this morning at Manhattan’s St. John The Divine. Yes, I flippantly used the term “funeral crasher!” because that’s what I was. But it’s the singer, not the song. The haters ignored the fact that I (a) asked for God’s forgiveness in having crashed, (b) ascribed my crashing success to the intervention of angels, and (c) said that I crashed with reverence and respect for James, David Chase and all the “made” Sopranos guys. The rush-to-judgment pissheads simply weren’t listening. They never do. They’re scolds…shrill finger-wagging scolds going “tut-tut!” and “no, no, no!”
“I didn’t crash Gandolfini’s funeral like some giggling monkey, and I didn’t take the subway up there this morning with the intention of crashing. I crashed it solemnly like some devoted choirboy or Sopranos family soldier. I just grimmed up and shuffled up the cathedral steps and…well, go ahead and laugh but I honestly believe that I got past security because some angel from heaven who lived in my area of New Jersey when he or she was mortal happened to look down from heaven at that moment and said ‘whoa, wait up…he’s okay…fuck it, let him through.’
Sometime in mid-July of ’99, or 18 and 1/2 years ago, I suffered through an all-media screening of Jan DeBont‘s The Haunting. I went with the hope that DeBont, whose stock had plummeted two years earlier after the catastrophe of Speed 2: Cruise Control, might rebound if he would only pay tribute to Robert Wise‘s The Haunting (’63) by relying on eerie suggestion rather practical and CG effects. Alas, he ignored Wise’s approach entirely.
“The Haunting isn’t merely bad,” I wrote in my Mr. Showbiz column. “It’s one of the emptiest, most ineptly plotted, synthetically programmed, pointlessly overdone summer movies I’ve ever seen. I’m now completely convinced that this is the movie that drove Liam Neeson to the brink of retirement. The film’s final close-up is of Neeson and Catherine Zeta Jones wearing looks of utter exhaustion with a hint of self-loathing, and you have to figure that gearing themselves up emotionally for this shot couldn’t have been much of a stretch.”
The Hauntingwasn’t a financial wipeout — it cost $80 million to make, earned $91.4 million domestically and $177 million worldwide. But it was so grueling to sit through…well, I don’t know that The Haunting was the reason behind DeDont not landing another directing gig until three years had elapsed — Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (’03). But it sure didn’t help.
This ScreenPrism essay about the films of Stanley Kubrick is only six days old — it was posted on 2.18. Boiled down it basically says that Kubrick’s films all say the same thing, which is that humans are ignoble, disruptive and untrustworthy creatures consumed by self-denial and various foolish mythologies and delusions, but that the visual framings used by Kubrick to tell variations of this same sad story can be deeply lulling and at the same time transporting. Similarly, this essay is so soothing on a certain level that it will engage your mind and especially your memory while at the same time putting you into a kind of trance. I stopped listening to the young woman’s narration after two or three minutes, and yet I continued to absorb what she was saying by a kind of osmosis, by sinking into the clips like some kind of heated pool or bathtub. An amazing process.
Barry Levinson‘s Horsing Around In The Shower is based on a script by Debora Cahn, John C. Richards and David McKenna. It seems to primarily be a journalism saga, pitting the late Joe Paterno (Al Pacino), Penn State’s legendary football coach who disgraced himself by looking the other way while Jerry Sandusky (Jim Johnson) did what he did with God-knows-how-many young guys, against real-life Patriot News reporter Sarah Ganim (Riley Keough), who’s now working for CNN.
To go by the trailer Joe’s wife Sue (Kathy Baker) looked the other way also. HBO will debut the 102-minute film, which is actually called Paterno, on 4.7.
Again — you have to see Amir Bar-Lev‘s Happy Valley (’14) before watching the Levinson version.
“No self-respecting cinefile approves of colorizing black-and-white movies,” I wrote on 10.28.17, “but colorizing monochrome stills can be a respectable thing if done well.”
The Humphrey Bogart-Lauren BacallBig Sleep still below is probably the best colorized b&w image from a Hollywood film mine eyes have ever beheld — ditto the Bogart-and-Ingrid BergmanCasablanca shot below it. I’m aware that monochrome films of the ’30s and ’40s were shaded and lighted to deliver maximum impact in terms of a certain silvery compositional aura, but these really look good.
Okay, not so much the Bogart-and-Martha Vickers shot from The Big Sleep, but even that isn’t too bad.
Ditto: “Remember how colorized images used to look in the bad old days? I don’t know if it’s a matter of someone having come up with a better color-tinting software or someone’s willingness to take the time to apply colors in just the right way, but every so often a fake-color photo can look really good. Incidentally: I approve of carefully tinted black-and-white newsreel footage.”
More than a little dodging and sidestepping went into the Annihilation aggregate critic ratings — 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, 80% on Metacritic. Critics are always afraid of appearing unhip or clueless — even if a movie confounds or irritates or pisses them off, it’s safer to convey knowing approval or respect for what it seems to be attempting. Presumably a good portion of the HE community saw it last night and has seen through the bullshit. And if some “liked’ it, I know they’re also bothered by it. Please share whatever reactions you may be struggling with.
I was reminded this morning of what a brilliant scary-movie director Andy Muschietti used to be. A little less than six years ago, I mean, when he was directing Mama in Toronto with producer Guillermo del Toro by his side. I’m speaking of a classic Mama bit that belongs in the annals of classic high-craft horror. The film is worth seeing for this alone.
From my January 2013 Mama review (“Battle of the Mommies“): “It involves an older sister stealing her younger sister’s blanket, and then a static hallway shot showing the two of them wrestling for control of the blanket in their bedroom but with only the younger sister visible. And then we see something unexpected. I laughed out loud. I mostly hate the geek realm, but for that moment I was in geek fucking heaven.
“Mama is a light-touch horror pic. A concoction that sneaks in with hints and teasing cuts and, okay, an occasional shock cut or shock-music prompt, but mainly little cinematic games that turn you on if you’re attuned, and if not you’ll just sit there like a popcorn-munching wildebeest and going ‘okay, okay but…c’mon, dude, where’s the really crazy shit? Where are the blood-soaked carpets?”]’
“All I know is that Mama is made for guys like myself. It’s not in the least bit gross or revolting, and it’s seriously, fundamentally scary.
“It’s also one hell of a calling card for first-time-director Muschietti as it feels like it was directed by a middle-aged pro. That’s a nod to Del Toro as he developed Mama, finessed it, worked on every aspect (it was shot in Toronto around the time of principal photography of Pacific Rim), and perhaps held Muschietti’s hand the way Howard Hawks held Christian Nyby‘s during the making of The Thing. It’s just that Mama feels so smooth and commanding and sure of itself.”
“Well, I love Andy and [his sister/producer] Barbara Muschietti,” she told Screenrant‘s Padraig Cotter. “I worked with them on Andy’s directorial debut, Mama. So we’ll see. They’re friends, they’re family. Anything that they’re doing I want to be a part of, so I hope we can make it happen.”
Except IT wasn’t nearly as creepy as Mama. IT actually made it clear, if you ask me, that the Muschietti who’d made Mama, a fellow who seemed to believe in the less-is-more Val Lewton approach, had been replaced by a studio-kowtowing hack.
Doesn’t the fact that Judd Apatow‘s The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling (HBO, 3.26 and 3.27) runs four and a half hours…shouldn’t that fact alone warrant special interest among Shandling fans, of which there are still many? I loved Garry’s angst, his depressive personality, his low self-esteem…I’m talking worship here. But I have to say I liked Shandling in his 40s and 50s better than the older version. His hair, for instance. Shandling had great wavy follicles in the ’90s but was down to a tennis-ball cut after Obama got elected. And his eyes got smaller — they were big and expressive in his 40s but slitty and beady in his 60s. And I don’t know about that Zen thing he got into, and I’m saying this as a former Bhagavad Gita guy. Garry once wrote “you don’t need to be anything, you can just be.” The only people who say or think that are filthy rich or completely devoted to abstinence and poverty, and Shandling wasn’t among the latter. The poor guy died of a heart attack on 3.24.16, at age 66. If there’s anything beyond death, Garry is surely part of it now, dispersed into a trillion particles of consciousness or possibly transformed into a perfect smile.
