Steven Knight‘s Serenity (Aviron, 1.30) seems like a January release, all right — James M. Cain meets Body Heat meets Matthew McConaughey‘s Jimmy Buffet character, operating a boat on a Caribbean island called Plymouth (**). It feels like sexy trash — diverting if semi-disposable. At the same I’m intrigued by anything from Knight, who wrote the respected Eastern Promises; he also directed and wrote the masterful Locke.

I’ll always have a problem with McConaughey’s southern drawl. I can never completely understand what he’s saying, and the only solution, it seems, is to watch him with subtitles. Plus he’s starting to look his age — his pretty-boy aura is slipping away.

(**) Pic was actually shot east of Madagasgar, on an Indian Ocean “island nation” called Mauritius.

Here’s the final 35 in HE’s (actually the IMDB‘s) list of adult-friendly, quality-aspiring 2019 films — possible critical faves and perhaps even award-season contenders. I’m not 100% certain that each and every film is a 2019 release, but they certainly seem to be. It’s a process of honing, refining…getting to the truth.

Later today I’ll post the whole list of 97, but broken down into categories — top 25 HE hotties, possible award-season contenders, indie-woke-Sundance-Spirits-Gotham (aka inspirational, identity politics, intrepid p.c. heroes), and generally aspirational. Reminder: This list contains no submental jizz-whizzers (CG-driven, comic-book, sequels, horror).

Here’s the initial roster of 31 (posted on 11.18), and the follow-up slate, also numbering 31 (11.19)

63. Deston Daniel Cretton‘s Just Mercy — Attorney Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) defends Walter McMillan (Jamie Foxx), a man unjustly imprisoned for murder. Based on Stephenson’s memoir. (Jordan, Foxx, Brie Larson, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Tim Blake Nelson, Rob Morgan)

64. Jay Roach‘s Fair and Balanced — Fox honcho Roger Ailes and sexual harassment allegations that resulted in his resignation. (Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Allison Janney, Kate McKinnon, Malcolm McDowell, Mark Duplass)

65. Terrence Malick‘s Radegund — Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian conscientious objector, refuses to fight for the Third Reich in World War II and is executed in 1943. Shot in late summer of 2016. (August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, Michael Nyqvist, Jürgen Prochnow, Matthias Schoenaerts, Bruno Ganz)

66. Rod Lurie‘s The Outpost — Abut the 2013 Battle of Kamdesh in which Taliban forces attacked a U.S. outpost. The result of the battle was a pyrrhic victory as most the the outpost was destroyed and 8 Americans were killed and 27 were wounded but Taliban forces retreated due to heavy casualties. Over 150 Taliban fighters were killed during the battle. Staff Sergeant Clinton Romesha (Scott Eastwood) and Staff Sergeant Ty Carter (Caleb Landry Jones) were both awarded the Medal of Honor in 2013 for courageous actions. Orlando Bloom also stars.

67. Darius Marder‘s Sound of Metal — (Olivia Cooke, Riz Ahmed, Mathieu Amalric, Arthur Hiou)

68. Fernando Meirelles‘ The Pope — Opposing visions between two of the most powerful leaders in the Catholic Church, both of whom must address their own pasts and the demands of the modern world in order to move the church forward. (Juan Minujín, Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Pryce, Matthew T. Reynolds)

69. Casey Affleck‘s Light of My Life — A father and his young daughter find themselves trapped in the woods. Also written by Affleck. (Casey Affleck, Elisabeth Moss, Tom Bower, Timothy Webber)

70. Robin Bissell‘s The Best of Enemies — Civil rights activist Ann Atwater faces off against C.P. Ellis, Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, in 1971 Durham, North Carolina over the issue of school integration. (Sam Rockwell, Tarahji O. Henson, Wes Bentley, Anne Heche)

71. Sia‘s Music — the story of a sober drug dealer and their disabled sister. (Kate Hudson, Hector Elizondo, Maddie Ziegler)

72. Julius Onah‘s Luce — (Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, Tim Roth, Kelvin Harrison, Jr.)

73. Lone Scherfig‘s The Kindness of Strangers — Four people suffering through the worst crises of their lives. (Andrea Riseborough, Zoe Kazan, Caleb Landry Jones, Jay Baruchel)

74. Chiwetel Ejiofor‘s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind — A boy in Malawi helps his village by building a wind turbine after reading about them in a library book. (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Aïssa Maïga, Joseph Marcell, Noma Dumezweni)

75.Christoph Waltz‘s Georgetown — Ulrich Mott, an ambitious social climber, marries a wealthy widow in Washington D.C. in order to mix with powerful political players. (Christoph Waltz, Annette Bening, Corey Hawkins, Vanessa Redgrave)

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I bunked in the New York City region from late ’08 to March ’11 — call it a year and a half. Maybe my memory is a bit hazy but my general impression was that Manhattan screenings and press junkets happened more or less in concert with the same activities in Los Angeles. You didn’t lose out by being a New Yorker — you had approximately the same access to timely screenings. Or so it seemed.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Over the decades I’ve been lucky enough to know and trust many women of good character, but mostly in the realm of friendship.

I’m speaking of sensible, practical-minded women — women I always felt I could trust and rely upon and who always had a certain steadiness. And who were wise about human nature, and had a pretty good idea about who they were and believed in hard work and discipline and who always offered affection in a comforting, nourishing, no-pressure sort of way. Women, in short, who’ve reminded me in certain ways of my late mother, Nancy.

Every guy on the planet says this, I know.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck‘s Never Look Away (Sony Classics, 11.30) is a sprawling, three-hour epic about a gifted German painter who gradually finds his voice over a long period of totalitarian rule. It begins in World War II and ends sometime in the late ’60s. (Or so I recall.) Like von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, it focuses on the tension between an artist and changing political regimes and upheavals affecting his art.

Inspired by the life of painter Gerhard Richter, who lived under Nazi and Communist rule in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s before escaping to West Germany in ’61, it’s “engaging” in a rather prim and conservative manner, like a romantic TV movie or an on-the-nose airport novel. This happens, that happens…chapter by chapter, episode by episode. The viewer is always being told that the Richter-like protagonist (played by the not-very-tall Tom Schilling) is moving towards a profound climax or destiny of some sort. Struggling through all kinds of adversity and difficulty but gradually breaking through.

It honestly reminded me of The Other Side of Midnight except it’s about a committed artist rather than Marie France Pisier‘s gold-digger. The generous servings of gratuitous (but entirely welcome) nudity also carry a ’70s echo. It costars Sebastian Koch (the striking lead in The Lives of Others), Paula Beer, Saskia Rosendahl and Oliver Masucci.

Obviously I didn’t find it brilliant, but I didn’t mind it. I was never bored. The last hour is the most rewarding. Most of the critical community has been thumbs-up, and some have been knocked out. Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman has called it “a stunning masterpiece…one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my life.” Who am I to dispute that kind of passion?

A German critic friend says it’s “aimed clearly at a higher-educated, middle-class audience that has an interest in art and history, but not necessarily in cinema. There’s a long tradition in German cinema for films like this that have all done really well. But I agree with you that it’s quite stuffy and almost antiquated — quite the opposite of the kind of risk-taking and wild art that the film champions.”

You may see a breezy, hah-haayyy! Hollywood Reporter cover shot of the Vice trio — director-cowriter Adam McKay, costars Amy Adams and Christian Bale. And you may be chuckling over Bale’s decision to skinny himself down to his Machinist weight after becoming a lardbucket to play the Ultra-Luciferian Dick Cheney. And you may enjoy McKay’s head-rest sitting posture during the video chat. And your interest in seeing Vice may be greater as a result. All to the good!

But what I see, mainly, is the Los Angeles community (and the Annapurna marketing team in particular) saying to the New York film journalist community, “Aaahh, being first out of the gate is so nice! We’ve seen the film, talked about it, sussed it out. Some of us may even be dipping in for seconds. You New Yorkers will see it soon, don’t worry, but in the meantime it feels so good, so top-of-the-world to be the first responders.”

Herewith is Hollywood Elsewhere’s second flaky stab at a list of adult-friendly, quality-aspiring 2019 films — possible critical faves and perhaps even award-season contenders. Yesterday’s post contained about 30; I’m posting 30 more today and the final 30 will appear tomorrow. The comes the process of weeding out the chaff, and then deciding which belong in the top 20 or 25.

32. Jordan Peele‘s Us — Plot unknown; described as a “social horror-thriller” — Bob Strauss champing at the very bit. (Lupita Nyong’o, Anna Diop, Elisabeth Moss, Kara Hayward)

33. William Nicholson‘s Hope Gap — A family deals in the aftermath of the shock revelation that a husband plans to end his 29 year marriage to his wife. (Annette Bening, Bill Nighy, Josh O’Connor, Aiysha Hart)

34. Aaron Schneider‘s Greyhound — During World War II, an international convoy of 37 Allied ships, led by Commander Ernest Krause (Tom Hanks), cross the treacherous North Atlantic while being hotly pursued by wolf packs of German U-boats. (Tom Hanks, Elisabeth Shue, Karl Glusman, Stephen Graham)

35. Dan Gilroy‘s Velvet Buzzsaw — American horror thriller film, written and directed by Gilroy. (Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Zawe Ashton, Natalia Dyer, Tom Sturridge, Daveed Diggs, Toni Collette, John Malkovich and Billy Magnussen)

36. Sam Mendes‘ 1917 — World War I saga, plot unknown. (George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman)

37. Untitled Miranda July Project — A woman’s life is turned upside down when her criminal parents invite an outsider to join them on a major heist they’re planning.
(Evan Rachel Wood, Gina Rodriguez, Debra Winger, Richard Jenkins)

38. Ciro Guerra‘s Waiting for the Barbarians — A Magistrate working in a distant outpost begins to question his loyalty to the empire. (Johnny Depp, Robert Pattinson, Mark Rylance, Harry Melling)

40. Jim Jarmusch‘s The Dead Don’t Die — Deadpan comic zombie film (Tilda Swinton, Adam Driver, Caleb Landry Jones, Chloë Sevigny)

41. Casey Affleck‘s Far Bright Star — Set in 1916, an aging cavalryman leads a team of men to hunt down the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. However, after an ambush in which most of the men are killed, the cavalryman must struggle to survive in the desert. (Joaquin Phoenix)

42. Josephine Decker‘s Shirley — A famous Horror writer finds inspiration for her next book after she and her husband take in a young couple. (Elisabeth Moss, Michael Stuhlbarg, Logan Lerman, Odessa Young)

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I’ve been humming, or more precisely sinus-throbbing, bass notes for most of my life, going to back to when I was 10 or 11. When I say sinus-throbbing, I mean that my bass guitar is inside my head, or more precisely inside my ear drums and to a lesser extent my nasal cavity. When I “play my bass,” so to speak, I’m the only who hears it properly. The vibration is magnificent. I should’ve learned how to play bass instead of becoming a mediocre drummer.

“Almost all music is centered around chords. Chords define the harmonic structure of each song and tell you which notes will sound good and which won’t. If you study music theory, you’ll spend a lot of time learning about what the different chords are and how they lead from one to another. Guitarists and pianists play full chords, simultaneously sounding every note that makes up each chord. They are the ones who really fill out the harmonies.

“But as a bass player, your relationship with chords is a little different. You don’t play every note in a chord, but your deep, low tones ground the chord and help define its sound. Your primary job as a bass player, besides rhythmic support, is to provide the foundation for the chords. Your low notes really give a solid tonal grounding to guide listeners’ ears in following the shifts of harmony. For the most part, this means playing the roots of the chords.” — from “How to Play Along With Chords on Bass” by James Porter, posted on 6.10.18.

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You may see a breezy, hah-haayyy! Hollywood Reporter cover shot of the Vice trio — director-cowriter Adam McKay, costars Amy Adams and Christian Bale. And you may be chuckling over Bale’s decision to skinny himself down to his Machinist weight after becoming a lardbucket to play the Ultra-Luciferian Dick Cheney. And you may enjoy McKay’s head-rest sitting posture during the video chat. And your interest in seeing Vice may be greater as a result. All to the good!

But what I see, mainly, is the Los Angeles community (and the Annapurna marketing team in particular) saying to the New York film journalist community, “Aaahh, being first out of the gate is so nice! We’ve seen the film, talked about it, sussed it out. Some of us may even be dipping in for seconds. You New Yorkers will see it soon, don’t worry, but in the meantime it feels so good, so top-of-the-world to be the first responders.”

At the end of the comment thread for “The Haters Are Due on Maple Street,” which is about how p.c. zealots are doing everything they can to take down Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book, I wrote something that I should have included in the original piece:

“Isn’t every film finally about where its heart is, whether it’s been made in a 20th or 21st Century way?”

Not every great film has a discernible heartbeat of one kind of another, but the ones that people love and reference decades later all share that emotional seep-in thing —Ikiru, Manchester By The Sea, Brokeback Mountain, The Seven Samurai, The Best Years of Our Lives, La Strada, Call Me By Your Name, Au Hasard, Balthazar, etc. It really shouldn’t matter if the film in question is attuned to contemporary mindsets or to the way people felt and thought 20 or 30 years ago or whatever. All that really matters is whether or not a film knows itself — whether or not it’s settled and confident in its own shoes — and delivers accordingly. In the end that’s all that counts.

Back to my thread comment: “Whether or not the p.c. assholes want to acknowledge this, Green Book has a good heart and it knows from restraint and the value of high craft, and it applies exactly the right kind of just-so emphasis, the right kind of tone for this kind of story.

“God, I hate the p.c. zealots…I hate them the way Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz hated those nabobs.”

Glenn Kenny response: “‘This is a wonderful movie about humanity, compassion and mutual respect, and anyone who says different I wanna see dead’ is peak HE, I guess. This season’s meltdown promises much entertainment. It’s nice to see Jeff and Sasha doing the Jack Klugman/Anita Gillette bit from the “Quincey” anti-punk-rock episode here, too.”

Wells to Kenny: “Touche — that’s a semi-fair point. But of course, p.c. zealots aren’t ‘people’ — they’re radicalized rhetorical constructs walking around with arms, legs and heads.”

I’ve seen all eight episodes of Ben Stiller‘s Escape at Donnemara (Showtime, debuting tonight), and it certainly delivers in an unexpected way. By that I mean it does a very unusual and fairly ballsy thing in the home stretch — a move that I totally respected.

It’s an appropriately grim, throughly-delved-into saga of the Clinton Correctional prison break of 2015, and the schemings of convicted murderers Richard Matt (Benicio del Toro) and David Sweat (Paul Dano), and about the help they got from miserable prison worker Tilly Mitchell (Patricia Arquette), a married, middle-aged woman with whom both convicts had a sexual thing with.

Everyone’s read the news accounts and can probably recall some of the basic plot points. Stiller’s film digs into every nook, cranny and orifice, and mines the feelings of lethargy and resignation for all they’re worth.

Escape at Dannemora is composed in spare, straight fashion — utilitarian, not overly shaded and certainly not arthousey, unpretentious. And oh boy, did I feel gloomed out by those bright green walls everywhere. If only state-prison walls were dark olive drab.

Despite suggestions and metaphors contained in the word “escape”, Stiller’s film is mainly about the planning of the break. The first five episodes, to be exact, while simultaneously focusing on Matt, Sweat and Mitchell’s triangulated relationship. Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood‘s Escape From Alcatraz was also primarily about planning, but of course that whole film ran only 112 minutes.

I honestly felt that this portion went on too long — that Stiller was more into keeping me locked up than offering what I wanted from the beginning, which was to savor those little tingles of freedom, however brief and despite the wrong kind of company. We all want to tag along when the door swings open.

The sixth episode is about the escape itself, the seventh episode stops the narrative cold in order to explore Matt, Sweat and Mitchell’s back-stories (i.e., the gutsy strategy that I spoke of earlier) and the final episode is about Matt and Sweat trying to elude a $23 million dragnet as they struggle and scramble their way through the woods, and scrounge what they can in a couple of abandoned cabins.

What is Escape at Donnemara really about? Grim lives and grim fates and how trapped and depressed the lower-middle-class bumblefucks feel, especially by the likelihood that they’ll never climb out of it. It’s nonetheless about people desperate to break out, even if that only amounts to daydreams.

Escape at Dannemora is mainly Arquette’s film (she’ll be nominated for an Emmy) with Del Toro and Dano delivering like the natural-born pros they are every time at bat. The final episode will air on 1.6.19.