While defending President Donald Trump‘s “brave” condolence call to a Gold Star family, Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly attacked Rep. Frederica Wilson, calling her an “empty barrel.” Lawrence O’Donnell: “The word ‘brave’ has absolutely no application with the word ‘Trump.'”
In my positive review of Joseph Kosinski‘s Only The Brave (Sony, 10.20), a firefighting drama set in Prescott, Arizona, I mentioned that the characters are all “youngish and white, Prescott being one of the whitest cities in the country….each and every character is Wonderbread.”
I mentioned that I felt “slightly bothered by the fact that these guys are probably all red-state conservatives but I got past that.” I also said that “when the big tragedy finally hits…I wouldn’t want to lie and say I didn’t feel slightly conflicted about the fact that the 19 real-life victims probably would have voted for Donald Trump had they lived, but I felt the sadness, for sure.”
All to say that Only The Brave is a red-state flick about brawny, beer-drinking men doing the hard firefighting thing, and that it’s aimed at red-state beefalos.
In any event, Brent Lang‘s Variety story about Brad Parscale, the digital media director for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, having been hired by Only the Brave producers to help sell the film to red-state moviegoers, falls right into line.
“Black Label Media, the film’s financier, retained Parscale to supplement online and social media marketing efforts,” Lang reports. “Sony Pictures is distributing the $38 million production, which is on track to open to a weak $6 million when it debuts this weekend.”
Under different circumstances I might feel irked about a Trump campaigner trying to sell an inspirational red-state film, but the bottom line, as I said on 10.11, is that Only The Brave is better than decent.
“In movie-lore terms the Only The Brave firefighters are a team of Howard Hawks hombres, or guys who measure themselves by the same macho yardstick that Cary Grant applied in Only Angels Have Wings and which John Wayne demanded of his men in Red River. ‘How good are you?’, ‘Do you have what it takes?’, ‘Can I depend on you when the heat comes down and the going gets tough?'” etc.
A few months ago Stephen Chbosky‘s Wonder (Lionsgate, 11.17) was being sold as a delicate family drama in the vein of Peter Bogdanovich‘s Mask. Based on three relatively recent novels by R.J. Palacio, it’s about the journey of a young kid with a facial deformity (Jacob Tremblay) as he acclimates to school, and how his parents (Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson) and extended family help him along.
Five months ago (i.e., late May) a trailer popped. [See after the jump.] It suggested that the film would be partly about fear and trepidation and grade-school cruelty, and partly about love and kindness and family support. Sad to say, any half-realistic story about a facially deformed child would include depictions of cruelty at school, as kids can be absolutely heartless when it comes to judgments and dismissals of kids that are “different.”
Unfortunately, the trailer that popped today is about nothing but warm and glowing feel-good vibes. It’s all about gobs of parental love and hugs and tears of joy. It’s basically selling a film about what a wondrous and magical thing it is for a kid to be facially deformed. In short, the marketing guys seem to be panicking.
During the 2017 Toronto Film Festival the Boston Globe‘s Janice Page wrote that I, Tonya is “hilarious, sharp, snarling, pitch perfect.” Trust me, it is only one of those things — i.e., snarling. I wrote that “unless you have a strange liking for the company of losers, abusers and total dipshits, you’ll definitely want to steer clear of this cesspool exercise. It lasts 119 minutes, and it feels, trust me, like 139 or 149.”
I also called it “an exaggerated, pugilistic black farce.”
“An Ugly Stick Movie That Will Leave Welts,” posted on 9.12.17: “Abuse begets more abuse, and abused victims sometimes (often?) seek out fresh replacement abusers. And so Tonya Harding‘s bitter, chain-smoking mom, Lavona, beat and belittled her daughter from age of 7 onward, and as teenaged and then 20-something Tonya ascended in the figure-skating realm she became a ferociously angry abuser herself with a huge chip on her shoulder…what else?
“Tonya married and then separated from an abusive, moustache-wearing asshole, Jeff Gillooly, who conspired to have Harding’s skating rival Nancy Kerrigan temporarily disabled with a police-baton blow to the knee, and with many presuming, fairly or unfairly, that Harding was aware of Gillooly’s plan and was more or less down with it.
“When I, Tonya ended I turned to the guy next to me and said, ‘How long was that?’ ‘Two hours,’ he said. ‘Good God,’ I replied.
“Am I the only honest, straight-shooting journo-critic in Toronto right now? I, Tonya is cinematic abuse, pure and simple. It’s an ugly pill from hell — a violent, vulgar, relentlessly profane assembly of lower-middle-class white-trash types beating on each other and smoking and swearing and losing their tempers and causing cuts and swellings. It’s a tacky portrait of American self-loathers, brawlers, grotesques, hungry-for-famers, human garbage, etc.
I’ve only seen two episodes of Joe Penhall and David Fincher‘s Mindhunter, the ten-part Netflix series about the beginnings of the FBI’s serial crime unit, but I’m already impressed and looking forward to the remaining eight. David Fincher directed these episodes with an unhurried, even-toned hand. Partly Son of Zodiac (set in the late ’70s) and partly I-don’t-know-what-yet, it’s a serving of methodic, step-by-step naturalism. Creepy but real. Perfectly performed by costars Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany. Beautifully shot by Erik Messerschmidt. A striking supporting performance by Cameron Britton as serial killer Edmund Kemper. I can’t wait until they run into Richard Speck. It’s about study more than anything else, and it chills right down to the bone.
It was announced this morning that Jordan Peele‘s Get Out has scored four Gotham Award nominations — Best Feature, Best Breakthrough Director, Best Screenplay and Best actor (Daniel Kaluuya). Identity politics had nothing to do with this. Ditto the fact that Get Out has earned $175,484,140 domestically and $253 million worldwide. These four Gotham noms were entirely driven by the inescapable conclusion that Get Out is a delightfully on-target racial satire-cum-horror film as well as a heart-touching tribute to the films and careers of Larry Cohen and John Carpenter. Not to mention those brilliantly hypnotic special effects.
HE predictions are based on which nominees are the most politically favored by the cool kidz…
Best Feature / Call Me by Your Name (Sony Pictures Classics); The Florida Project (A24); Get Out (Universal Pictures); Good Time (A24); and I, Tonya (NEON) — Likeliest winners: Call Me By Your Name or The Florida Project.
Best Documentary / Ex Libris – The New York Public Library (Zipporah Films); Rat Film (MEMORY and Cinema Guild); Strong Island (Netflix); Whose Streets? (Magnolia Pictures); The Work (The Orchard and First Look Media) — Likeliest Winner: Ex Libris – The New York Public Library.
Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award / Maggie Betts for Novitiate (Sony Pictures Classics); Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird (A24); Kogonada for Columbus (Superlative Films/Depth of Field); Jordan Peele for Get Out (Universal Pictures); Joshua Z Weinstein for Menashe (A24) — Likeliest winners: Jordan Peele or Greta Gerwig.
Best Screenplay / The Big Sick, Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani (Amazon Studios);
Brad’s Status, Mike White (Amazon Studios); Call Me by Your Name, James Ivory (Sony Pictures Classics); Columbus, Kogonada (Superlative Films/Depth of Field); Get Out, Jordan Peele (Universal Pictures); Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig (A24) — Likeliest Winners: The Big Sick, Get Out or Lady Bird.
Best Actor / Willem Dafoe in The Florida Project (A24); James Franco in The Disaster Artist (A24); Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out (Universal Pictures); Robert Pattinson in Good Time (A24); Adam Sandler in The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (Netflix); Harry Dean Stanton in Lucky (Magnolia Pictures) — Likeliest Winners: Willem Dafoe or Harry Dean Stanton (posthumously).
“…even when they’re right in front of ya?”
Posted on 9.14.17: Jim Carrey and Chris Smith‘s Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond is…what is it? Okay, it’s a 95-minute doc about Carrey’s super-intense experience in portraying put-on comic Andy Kaufman for Milos Forman‘s Man on the Moon (’99), but as a “making of” saga it’s a way-above-average thing, and as a slice of intimate celebrity portraiture it’s anything but run-of-the-mill.
The film achieves specialness by way of (a) a trove of heretofore-unseen backstage footage, shot by a crew Carrey hired to stay with him throughout filming, and (b) Carrey’s talking-head narration, which I found perceptive and (to my surprise) emotionally affecting.
I was hoping for a diverting backstage thing, but Jim & Andy is much more than that.
It’s not just an essay about the craft of movie acting and the ritual of surrendering to a role. Carrey did this so completely while playing Kaufman in ’98 that he literally stopped being himself on a 24/7 basis (refusing to answer to Jim, speaking of himself in the third person). It’s also a study of the personas that we all project socially vs. the person we really are deep down. Which makes it a food-for-thought film about what social identity really boils down to, and the games that we all submit to in order to fulfill expectations and keep up appearances.
I was never not fascinated, and I loved the flavor of it. I was especially struck by an anecdote about a certain phone conversation Carrey had with Man on the Moon director Milos Forman, during which Carrey floated an idea about “firing” Kaufman and the super-contemptible Tony Clifton (I was never able to tolerate this alter-ego asshole) and doing imitations instead.
Update: The Sufjan Stevens song that I strongly associate with Call Me By Your Name — “Mystery of Love” — is heard in the film as well as the trailer. Ditto Stevens “Visions of Gideon.”
The best Call Me By Your Name moment was the first viewing, nine months ago at the Sundance Film Festival. The second time was nearly as good but less special. The third time less so. But it’s always like that. I wish it wasn’t.
As ultra-violent prison dramas go, Steven Craig Zahler‘s Brawl in Cell Block 99 pushes the envelope and really wails in a crazy caveman sort of way. The most rancid bad guys pay for their awfulness in the worst way when their arms and legs are snapped like twigs and their heads are pounded upon and opened up with all kinds of glistening brain matter spilling out. Somebody called it “a grade-A piece of meathead cinema.” I’ll go along with that.
It gets really hardcore in the third act. I mean really hardcore. I was watching it last night on Amazon and going “Jesus H. Christ…this is fetishy!” A lot of bruising hand-to-hand action. Fisticuffs, beatdowns, bone-snappings, eye-gougings.
And it’s a very right-wing thing. Zahler and Vaughn are serious righties (i.e., libertarians) in the Mel Gibson vein but not, as far as I know, Trumpies. And boy, are they into idolizing and protecting mothers and unborn children! I only know that the more a movie idolizes a loyal pregnant wife and the more the pregnant wife is threatened by sadistic villains, the more right-wing it is. Protect the pregnant mom with a big club! Protect the children, protect the bloodline!
The thing is that Brawl in Cell Block 99 is exceptionally well-made, and as uncomfortable as I am with head-squashing movies I have to at least convey respect for Zahler’s craft.
On top of which it establishes Vince Vaughn as the reigning right-wing action hero of the moment — a six-foot-five Mr. Clean who speaks quietly and politely with a gentle Southern accent and who thoroughly thinks things over before pounding guys and squashing skulls. It’s not really my kind of movie, but it’s kind of Zen in its approach to character and payoff. It takes its time, takes its time. Liam “paycheck” Neeson has announced that he’s finished with this kind of film. Vaughn is the right-wing heir apparent, a kind of successor to Clint Eastwood.
If anyone wants to make a new series of 21st Century Harry Callahan movies, a new manifestation of a right-wing rogue cop or soldier of fortune who despises p.c. lefties but plays it straight and clear on a personal basis, Vaughn is the guy.
It just needs to be understood that Zahler knows how to apply the right kind of discipline in the making of this kind of film, and that Vaughn knows how to play it cool and steady as he waits for the inevitable bad shit to happen. Badass bone-snapper! I will make you whine and beg for death.
Paul Koestner‘s pant-worthy 35mm capturings have already sold me on Louis C.K.‘s I Love You, Daddy (The Orchard, 11.17). I’m obviously aware of the aggregate scores (69% on Metacritic, 57% on Rotten Tomatoes) but I’m not overly concerned.
From Sara Stewart’s N.Y. Post review: “Artistically, it’s gorgeous, with a soaring original orchestral score and the look of an old Hollywood classic. But its barbed screenplay is unapologetically filthy, with scenes like a comedian (Charlie Day) furiously pantomime-masturbating as CK’s TV-writer character Glen Topher talks to a famous actress (Rose Byrne) on the phone, or Chloe Grace Moretz, as Glen’s spoiled 17-year-old daughter China, sitting on Glen’s lap cooing the film’s title phrase and lounging around the house in a bikini.”
Sidenote: Chloe Grace Moretz is only 20 years old. (21 on 2.10.18.) She’s always seemed physically unexceptional to me, and so I was puzzled when I read Moretz’s complaint about having been fat-shamed by a costar when she was 15. (Her remarks appeared in Elizabeth Wagmeister’s Variety interview, posted on 8.8.17.) The ghost of Maximilien Robespierre has never seemed more threatening than it is right now, so it’s probably safer to not express a thought that came to mind when I watched this trailer.
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