Herewith is Hollywood Elsewhere’s first flaky stab at a list of adult-friendly, quality-aspiring 2019 films— possible critical faves and perhaps even award-season contenders.

I realize that the market for “adult-friendly films that aren’t aimed at idiots” is getting smaller and smaller as the culture devolves and that the governing motto behind 90% of theatrical fare (or at least films released between January and Labor Day) is “you don’t have to be a drooling moron to enjoy this crap but it’ll probably help.” But we all have to hang in there and hope for the best.

We all understand that limited and longform series on cable and streaming are delivering much of the dramatic satisfaction these days, but nothing will replace top–tier theatrical features — i.e., those films which require a special vision and artistic discipline and have to deliver the whole package between 100 and 140 minutes, for the most part.

Things are always hazy at this stage but here are some 2019 stand-outs listed on the IMDB — listed partly in order of interest, and partly randomly. Please understand that I know nothing — I have double-checked only a few titles, and this is purely a paste job at this stage. Research, commentary, corraboration — it’s a process that will take several days to get right:

1. Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman — A mob hitman recalls his possible involvement with the slaying of Jimmy Hoffa. (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Jesse Plemons).

2. Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — A faded TV actor and his stunt double embark on an odyssey to make a name for themselves in the film industry during the Helter Skelter reign of terror in 1969 Los Angeles. (Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie).

3. Ang Lee‘s Gemini Man — An over-the-hill hitman faces off against a younger clone of himself. (Will Smith, Clive Owen, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Benedict Wong).

4. Jon Favreau‘s The Lion King — CGI and live-action re-imagining of the 1994 Disney classic. (Voice-acting by Seth Rogen, Donald Glover, Alfre Woodard, Chiwetel Ejiofor).

5. Darren Aronofsky‘s Untitled Artificial Intelligence Courtroom Project — Allegedly about an artificial intelligence court case.

6. Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York [in limbo at Amazon, allegedly streaming sometime in ’19)

7. Untitled Harriet Tubman Project — The life of Civil War-era activist Harriet Tubman, who worked to liberate slaves in the American South by developing an a secretive system that allowed them to escape to freedom. (Viola Davis, Mike Gassaway)

8. J.C. Chandor‘s Triple Frontier — Five friends team to take down a South American drug lord. (Charlie Hunnam, Ben Affleck, Pedro Pascal, Oscar Isaac.)

9. Mia Hansen-Løve‘s Bergman Island — An American filmmaking couple who retreat to Faro for the summer to each write screenplays for their upcoming films in an act of pilgrimage to the place. (Mia Wasikowska, Vicky Krieps, Anders Danielsen Lie, Joel Spira.)

10. John Crowley‘s The Goldfinch — A boy in New York is taken in by a wealthy Upper East Side family after his mother is killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Nicole Kidman, Sarah Paulson, Finn Wolfhard, Ansel Elgort)

11. David Michod‘s The King — (Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn, Robert Pattinson)

12. Garth Davis‘s A House in the Sky — A young journalist is captured in Somalia and held in captivity for more than a year. (Rooney Mara)

13. Untitled Danny Boyle/Richard Curtis Project — Believed to be musically themed and be set around the 1960s or 1970s. (Lily James, Ana de Armas, Kate McKinnon, Lamorne Morris)

14. J.J. Abrams‘ Star Wars: Episode IX — The conclusion of the new ‘Star Wars’ trilogy. (Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Domhnall Gleeson, et.al.)

15. Marielle Heller‘s You Are My Friend — The story of Fred Rogers, the honored host and creator of the popular children’s television program, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Susan Kelechi Watson, Tammy Blanchard)

16. Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse — The story of an aging lighthouse keeper named Old who lives in early 20th-century Maine. (Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe)

17. Pedro Almodóvar‘s Dolor y gloria — A film director reflects on the choices he’s made in life as past and present come crashing down around him. (Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, Cecilia Roth, Asier Etxeandia)

18. Jonathan Jakubowicz‘ Resistance — The story of a group of Jewish Boy Scouts who worked with the French Resistance to save the lives of ten thousand orphans during World War II. (Clémence Poésy, Ed Harris, Jesse Eisenberg, Edgar Ramírez)

19. Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadette? — After her anxiety-ridden mother disappears, 15-year-old Bee does everything she can to track her down, discovering her troubled past in the process. (Cate Blanchett, Judy Greer, Kristen Wiig, Laurence Fishburne)

20. Benedict Andrews‘ Against All Enemies — An ambitious young F.B.I. Agent is assigned to investigate iconic actress Jean Seberg when she becomes embroiled in the tumultuous civil rights movement in late 1960s Los Angeles, California. (Kristen Stewart, Zazie Beetz, Vince Vaughn, Jack O’Connell)

21. Armando Iannucci‘s The Personal History of David Copperfield (Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw, Gwendoline Christie, Hugh Laurie)

22. Joe Wright‘s The Woman in the Window — An agoraphobic woman living alone in New York begins spying on her new neighbors only to witness a disturbing act of violence. (Amy Adams, Wyatt Russell, Gary Oldman, Julianne Moore)

23. Pablo Larraín‘s The True American — A Bangladeshi Air Force officer looking to make his way in the United States is shot by an American terrorist out to kill Muslims in the aftermath of September 11th.

24. Scott Z. Burns‘ The Torture Report — In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, CIA agents begin using extreme interrogation tactics on those they think were behind it. (Adam Driver, Jon Hamm, Jennifer Morrison, Maura Tierney).

25. Dee Rees‘ The Last Thing he Wanted — A journalist quits her newspaper job and becomes an arms dealer for a covert government agency. (Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Willem Dafoe, Toby Jones)

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Focus Features is releasing Asghar Farhadi‘s Everybody Knows on 2.8.19. The official trailer popped a couple of days ago. Here are excepts from my Cannes Film Festival review, posted on 5.8.18:

“Everybody Knows isn’t a bust but by Asghar Farhadi’s lofty standards it’s something of a shortfaller, particularly due to how the third act unfolds. It sure as hell isn’t About Elly — I can tell you that. It’s more on the level of The Past, although The Past, which some said suffered from a layered-onion plot that felt too soap-opera-ish, is a more satisfying film. And it’s slightly below The Salesman, and way below A Separation.

“But it’s still a Farhadi film, and that always means a character-rich, complexly plotted, proceeding-at-its-own-pace family-community drama — smartly written, always well acted — in which deeper and deeper layers of the onion are gradually peeled until the truth comes out.

“Set in rural Spain, it’s about the sudden disappearance of a character but it’s not an About Elly-level thing. At all. It’s actually about a kidnapping but that’s all I’m going to divulge. But Everybody Knows follows the Farhadi form by focusing on a large community of family members, friends, co-workers (i.e., a wine farm) and whatnot, and everyone, we soon realize, knows everyone else’s secrets. Well, most of them. And by the end, everything comes out in the wash

“But the story and especially the ending don’t echo all that much in a social-fabric or social-portraiture sense. All the loose ends are tied up for the most part, but it doesn’t quite get there. The film doesn’t expand or begin to play a bigger game.

“If a friend were to ask, I would say “actually it’s pretty good…it’s not Farhadi’s best and is probably his least commanding, but he’s such a brilliant, high-calibre filmmaker that even his second-tier movies are fully involving, always believably acted and quite the meticulous ride.”

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Earlier today the first wave of Los Angeles critics and columnists saw Adam McKay‘s Vice (Annapurna, 12.25). The tweets say that Christian Bale is great as the demonic and Machievelllian Dick Cheney (but then we all had that idea from the trailer) and that the film itself is quite nervy, audacious, provocative.

Variety‘s Kris Tapley: “Christian Bale might be in line to receive his second Academy Award to date, for his uncanny portrayal of former Vice President Dick Cheney [and] the film packs an infuriating punch as McKay writes history with lightning yet again. The question [is] whether we’re ready to dissect it all.

“Is the movegoing audience — indeed, are Academy voters — ready to take stock of all this chapter in history with [today’s] depressing news glowing up at us from our mobile devices on a daily basis? It would be a hell of a time to hand someone an Oscar for portraying this particular man, and that takes nothing from Bale’s brilliant work.

“By the same token, Vice could be argued as the most urgent and important film in the race this year. One just wonders if the stomach is there for it.”

Indiewire’s Anne Thompson: “No matter what happens to Vice in the public arena, actors will adore this crazy political movie.” In other words, Thompson foresees possibly adverse reactions from Joe and Jane Popcorn, and possibly even from certain critics.

Some day, of course, there will be a rich, juicy Donald Trump movie for everyone to savor.

I could listen all day to vocal-free instrumental tracks. The instrumental version of Steve Miller‘s “Big Ole Jet Airliner” is, no exaggeration, heavenly. Ditto the instrumental track for the Beatles‘ “I’m Looking Through You.” Maybe it’s because I was in a couple of bands and I’m into the beauty of just the right chord changes strummed just the right way and at just the right time and…I don’t know, the whole glorious jangly-jangly of it all.

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One, he doesn’t have that X-factor snap, that fizzy-chemistry thing. Two, he reminds me of Gary Lockwood in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and voters have always been more inclined to support candidates who remind them of Keir Dullea. And three, you can’t pronounce “Swalwell” trippingly on the tongue. “Walwell” would be bad enough, but the addition of an “s” forces your teeth, lips and tongue to go into contortions.

From Max Boot‘s “Did Matthew Whitaker Compromise the Mueller Investigation?,” posted by Washington Post on 11.15:

“Whitaker can do great damage even if he does nothing more than read all of Mueller’s files — as he now will have the right to do — and share that information with the White House. Sure, he would be risking impeachment or even prosecution for obstruction of justice, but Whitaker is not someone who has exactly exemplified devotion to the rule of law: He believes that Marbury v. Madison, the seminal 1803 case establishing legal review of legislation, was wrongly decided, and he has said that only Christians should serve as judges.

“There is already cause for concern that Whitaker may have tipped off the White House. On Thursday, Trump tweeted, ‘The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess. They have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts. They are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want. They are a disgrace to our Nation.’

“Trump has never used the phrase ‘inner workings’ before. Maybe he was just spouting off. Maybe he was reacting to information shared with him by witnesses Mueller has interrogated. Or maybe he has suddenly gained a vantage point on the ‘inner workings of the Mueller investigation’ that he did not have before Whitaker’s appointment.

“In this hour of peril for our democracy, it is imperative that Congress rush to the ramparts. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refuses to move legislation that would protect Mueller. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has belatedly said he would refuse to support judicial confirmations until that legislation is brought to the floor, but his threat will not be effective unless he is joined by at least one other Republican. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) actually introduced legislation to protect Mueller, but now he doesn’t see the need for it and even says Whitaker doesn’t need to recuse himself.

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“Studios To Push For Early Home Release in 2019.” So read the headline of a Brent Lang Variety piece that was posted earlier today. In other words, sooner or later day-and-date home streaming of new films will be a common option.

Setting the right price will obviously be a key factor (I’m guessing it’ll be $25 or $30 for either a single day’s access or a 12-hour window) but when it happens, something crucial in the American movie experience will begin to dissipate. And the ultimate effect will be, I believe, devastating.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

The blood naturally runs cold when you hear the “c” word, but when it comes to skin cancers 95% of the time it’s not a huge issue, and certainly not what anyone would call a threatening one. But the thing I’m dealing with — basel cell carcinoma with a little hint of squamous cell carcinoma — will involve a little down time on 12.4 so I may as well come clean and talk about what a careless, oblivious asshole I’ve been and how I got myself into this mess.

Well, not a “mess” but, you know, a kind of pain-in-the-ass situation.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Filmstruck will die as planned on 11.29, but the Criterion Collection will become a stand-alone streaming service in spring 2019. I guess the petition had an impact after all. So I’ll get my money back soon and then I’ll re-invest it in the Criterion Channel…right?

From the release: “The Criterion Channel will be picking up where the old service left off — (a) programming director spotlights, (b) actor retrospectives featuring major Hollywood and international classics, and (c) hard-to-find discoveries from around the world, complete with special features like commentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, and original documentaries.

“Our library will also be available through WarnerMedia’s new consumer platform when it launches late next year, so once both services are live, Criterion fans will have even more ways to find the films they love.

“We will be starting from scratch with no subscribers, so we’ll need all the help we can get. The most valuable thing you can do to help now is go to Criterion.com/channel and sign up to be a Charter Subscriber, then tell your friends to sign up too. We need everyone who was a FilmStruck subscriber or who’s been tweeting and signing petitions and writing letters to come out and to sign up for the new service. We can’t do it without you!”