In the comment thread for last night’s “Save Idris Elba“post, I was beaten up for saying that Kate Winslet‘s performance as a photojournalist in The Mountain Between Us (which of course is composed of her own personality and psyche) was not, in my estimation, an attractive component in the midst of the life-of-death survival struggle in the Rocky Mountains. I said that it seemed ill-advised for Idris Elba‘s surgeon character to fall for an obviously contentious and difficult woman under such circumstances. I expanded upon this a couple of hours ago:

“I’m sure Winslet is fine and gracious and ‘attractive’ when you get to know her, but to me she seems, under the guise of her photojournalist character, like a stressed and prickly lady with all the usual issues and baggage that any 42 year-old, Type-A personality has acquired, and that in the middle of a survive-or-die ordeal in rugged snowy mountain terrain THE LAST THING you’d want to add to your already-heavy backpack is a romantic relationship with a woman who is clearly a hive of thorns and contrary opinions and anxieties and skittish mannerisms and so on. NO DAY AT THE BEACH. Life is short, survival in the mountains is hard enough…later.

“I’m married to a ravishing 40-plus woman who has her particular issues like anyone else, but she doesn’t exude those jagged-edge anxiety vibes. I have enough of those on my own, thanks.”

Last night Deadline‘s Anthony D’Allesandro posted a financial obituary for Blade Runner 2049. At a suspected cost of $170 million plus p & a, it might make $35 million by Sunday night…maybe. “An awful start…kerplunk,” says D’Allesandro. And it’ll be lucky to hit $100 million by the end of its domestic run. And European returns aren’t so hot either….phfffft.

D’Allesandro quote: “One financier remarked that they weren’t impressed by Friday’s early European B.O. results, and that it’s now up to Asia to save Blade Runner 2049.” Asia! We’re dying! Please save us!

Before this toxic gloomfest disappears with its tail between its legs, please share what you thought and felt as you sat through it last night or earlier today. If you hated it, fine. If you hated watching it but respected it anyway (like me), fine. But please post something from the heart or the head before it becomes a dead issue.

From Nick “Action Man” Clement: “Not a fan. Yes, it looks amazing, and it felt like a Denis Villeneuve movie in construction and aesthetic design and I still absolutely love this spellbinding filmmaker, but the 2049 narrative offered zero surprises, far too much bloat (there’s no valid reason this should have been close to three hours), and nothing of any serious engagement other than some really nice shots of the spinners flying around and Ryan Gosling giving a nice Ryan Gosling performance.

“I found it rote, stunningly predictable (I could have written this movie), and stodgy where it should have been gripping. The musical score is unmemorable, offering nothing but annoying BLLLAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMM on the soundtrack, often times drowning out the dialogue.”

A few years ago I chatted with Billy Crystal for 70 or 75 seconds at a Sundance Film Festival party. My sense was that he’s a bit of cold-eyed prick, or at the very least is indifferent to social graces when it comes to inquiring journalists. But many comedians are like that so no biggie — goes with the territory. In any case I forgot this when I watched last night’s Real Time chat with Bill Maher, and particularly after he told his “honor the president” bit. Perfect.

Appearances to the contrary, The Mountain Between Us (20th Century Fox, 10.6) is not Touching The Void with a love story on the side but a love story with Touching The Void on the side, except it’s not as good as Touching The Void. Plus it’s a love story from hell, or certainly one afflicted with crabby vibes

Photojournalist Alex (Kate Winslet) and Ben (Idris Elba), a mild-mannered surgeon, decide to share the cost of a chartered small plane after their commercial flight is grounded at some airport in Idaho. Their older, overweight pilot (Beau Bridges) suffers a mid-flight stroke and they wind up crashing atop a mountain. They both survive, but after two or three days it’s clear they’ll have to hike their way down to civilization. Various threats manifest (predators, foul weather, hunger, a near-fatal fall, thin ice) but you knew that going in.

The best kind of hetero love story is one in which (a) a profound connection has occured and you’re dying for the would-be lovers to make something out of it, but (b) they don’t due to some overriding expectation or previous commitment or third-act tragedy. The worst kind of love story is one in which the woman is obviously a high-strung, Type-A ballbuster (Kate) and the guy is too thick to understand what he’s run into, and then he falls for her and they fuck and so on, and your feelings for him are torn between pity and contempt.

I saw The Mountain Between Us at the Toronto Film Festival, and you could just feel the “oh, no” current in the room. Everyone knew that Idris had made the wrong move. I was telepathically screaming “fuck, dude…you have a life and an honorable profession and many responsibilities back east, and you’re becoming romantically interested in a woman who’s obviously no day at the beach on top of trying to survive amid snow and icy temperatures and mountain lions?….what are you doing, man?”

I believed in Winslet as an object d’amour 20 years ago in Titanic, but that’s the glow of youth. Now she’s 42 and a bit weather-worn. She’s been through this and that with kids and a divorce and a house fire and everything else, and you can just tell by her anxious, fretful expression in those stills from Woody Allen‘s Wonder Wheel that she’s a stressed-out, high-maintenance handful.

A 49% Rotten Tomatoes score, and a 47% rating from Metacritic…do the math.

I didn’t hate The Mountain Between Us, but I certainly wasn’t disappointed when it ended.

I can’t say I “enjoyed” watching Blade Runner 2049 last night, but I can honestly say this morning that it’s gained upon reflection.

I’ve sat through my share of futuristic jizz-whizz fantasy flicks — nutrition-free wanks that you don’t respect the next morning. Denis Villeneuve‘s 30-years-later sequel to Ridley Scott‘s 1982 Blade Runner is no cheap-high ride — it’s a grim dystopian dream-trip, ruinously “beautiful” but soul-draining — but if you just surrender to the toxicity and allow it to pollute your system and your soul, you’ll probably realize the next morning that Villeneuve has deepened and expanded the overall tale. He’s made a serious film to which attention must be paid.

Perhaps not in a way that will matter all that much in the general realm and yes, you might feel a little sick from all those residual poisons, but a few hours later you’ll be glad you submitted. Because as much as I disliked sitting through it, Blade Runner 2049 stays with you, and that’s always a mark of something profound or at least high-fibre-ish.

It lasts an eternity — I checked my watch at least five or six times, and my muttered mantra all through it was “I don’t give a shit about any of this, I don’t give a shit about any of this, I don’t give a shit about any of this” — but it’s certainly a major vision thing. Pay your $16 dollars and sink into a thoroughly gloomy realm of super-holograms (including ones of Frank Sinatra and Vegas-era Elvis Presley), rot, ruin and industrial scrap, a toxic shithole populated with grim-faced characters you would just as soon squash as look at, a world of hair-grease and sprayed sweat and impassive, cold-death expressions, and all of it blanketed with rain, snow, sludge and chemical mud-glop.

And oh, yeah, for a story that you won’t give two shits about. A dingleberry doodle plot involving memory implants and oscured lineage and a secret no one must know (no one! just ask Jared Leto!) and a little wooden horse with a date (6.10.21) carved into the base, and some shit-hooey about original replicant creator Eldon Tyrell having given Rachael, the experimental replicant played by Sean Young in the ’82 original, the organic potential to reproduce and blah blah. And a narrative pace that will slow your own pulse and make your eyelids flutter and descend, and a growing need to escape into the outer lobby so you can order a hot dog and check your messages.

BR49 should have run two hours, not two hours and 44 minutes.

Do yourself a favor…seriously. Before seeing it this weekend, read the Wikipedia synopsis. Doing so will remove the irritating, hard-to-follow story tease and allow you to just concentrate on the visuals, which is all this thing is about anyway. It doesn’t matter anyway — nothing does, it’s all shit and distraction, you’re all just contributing to the Warner Bros. bottom line, to Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford‘s wealth while you subtract from your own. We’re all punks, fools, suckers, knaves. Warner Bros. pours a little whiskey onto the plastic floor, and like Ford’s Blade Runner wolf dog we lick it right up.

Fuck the story, fuck the lineage factor, fuck it all. Just sink into the chilly murderous vibe and Gosling’s impassive, glazed-over robot eyes, and Ford’s subtle emotional delivery (has he ever cried before on-screen?). Nobody cares and it doesn’t fucking matter if RG or Ford or Kevin Tsujihara are replicants. I’m a replicant with the capability of siring children and writing a daily column. What difference does it make if I’m an android or not, or if I dream of electric sheep? Nobody cares, nothing matters, it’s all bullshit.

What of the virtual-reality ho chick, the homicidal super-bitch and the brittle, tough-cookie supervisor played by Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks and Robin Wright? Smart women will not be pleased. (After the show a friend was listening to a whipsmart feminist deploring these characters and the phony, piss-poor writing.) For these are cardboard, non-dimensional figures (women acting like men or fulfilling men’s fantasies) who would never be hatched by a woman screenwriter. Grow some soul and awareness, Hampton Fancher and Michael Green.

How important is Gosling’s little wooden horse, and how does it feed into everything else? I’m still scratching my head about that, but I’m sure someone will explain it later today. Is Gosling’s “Joe” the replicant son of you-know-who? I didn’t give a shit. Is there any kind of emotionally satisfying undercurrent in any of this? Fuck no.

There’s one moment — one! — that made me sit up in my seat and say to myself “wait, hold on, this is semi-poignant.” But the spoiler whiners will kill me if I get specific. It involves Ford and a younger woman — I’ll leave it at that.

I knew this wouldn’t be a glorious, all-around triumph. I knew it would be brilliant but problematic. I knew not to trust those rave reviews written by balding, bespectacled and/or heavyset dweebs. If they’d written “it’s a bear to sit through and it makes you feel like shit, but it’s a masterpiece,” okay, but too many of them just wrote “it’s a masterpiece!” This is why people don’t trust critics. They live in their own world.

I’ve seen Susan Lacy‘s Spielberg (HBO, 10.7), a two-and-a-half-hour doc about the journey and the psychology of Steven Spielberg, and I’m telling you there’s more emotional revelation and honesty and cinematic punch in this thing than in many of Spielberg’s features, certainly the ones he’s made over the last 20-plus years.

It begins with a taste of Lawrence of Arabia and then a recollection from Spielberg about how he saw it repeatedly at age 16 and how it seemed so masterful that he nearly gave up his dream of becoming a movie director. Right from the start I was saying to myself, “I love this…this is about my church, my faith and all the movie dreams I’ve carried inside for decades…I love it already and it hasn’t even begun.”

Does Lacy shamelessly brown-nose? Yup, ‘fraid so. Does she sidestep, avert her gaze, emphasize the positive and avoid tough questions at almost every turn? Yes, she does. Is Spielberg, in fact, a 150-minute blowjob? Yeah, it is. But it’s a classy and beautifully assembled one. Spielberg delivers what most of us refer to as “the goods.” It offers balance, panache, love, perspective, open hearts, insight, joie de cinema and elegant editing and…oh, just a feeling of immense comfort and familiarity and fraternal bon ami.

I kind of loved it despite Lacy’s herculean determination to avoid telling the real truth about Spielberg-the-magnificent-and-bowed-down-to, which is that he’s a truly gifted lightweight, a very clever and hugely energetic guy who knows how to shoot the hell out of anything but has come to few conclusions and has next to nothing to say about the human condition or the state of the world, but has been insanely successful and that’s all that matters to most of the people in this town so what the hell…ass-smooch!

I take back that “nothing to say” stuff — Spielberg has often expressed his sentiments about how suburban family life is the greatest thing and how moms are generally more reliable than dads and that having an inner fantasy life can save you, etc.

The best parts are about Spielberg recalling his home life in a Pheonix suburb, his early discomfort about being a supposed Jewish outsider (a mindset that he profoundly reversed with the act of making Schindler’s List), his parents’ divorce (although he never explains why), the early feelings of inadequacy, how he had no life until his first son, Max, came along, etc.

Poor Anne Wiazemsky, the maiden of Au Hasard, Balthazar and star of Jean-Luc Godard‘s La Chinoise and Weekend, has died of cancer at age 70. She was married to the extremely thorny and difficult Godard for 12 years and went on to write 13 books, from “Mon beau navire” (’89) to “Un saint homme” (’17).

Wizaemsky was portrayed by Stacy Martin in Michel Hazanavicius‘s Redoubtable, which I panned after catching it at last May’s Cannes Film Festival.

It’s been reported that Wiazemsky was 17 when her affair with Godard began. I’m figuring more like 19. She was born in ’47, and was 18 when Au Hasard, Balthazar (released on 5.25.66) was shot in the summer or fall of ’65. In her book “Jeune Fille” Wiazemsky wrote that Bresson was obsessed with her and never let her out of her sight, so it seems unlikely that Godard was circling her then. The timetable indicates that the Godard coupling began in late ’65 or ’66.

In response to a N.Y. Times story cataloguing almost three decades worth of unsavory sexual intimidation and offers of pay-for-play sexual favoritism, Weinstein Co. honcho Harvey Weinstein has announced he’ll be stepping down from his perch in order to “learn about myself and conquer my demons…I know I have a long way to go but this is my commitment…I cannot be more remorseful about the people I hurt, and I plan to do right by all of them.”

Weinstein was not accused in the article of being a masher or a groper or of any kind of physically threatening, Roman Polanski-in-the-’70s behavior. The allegations basically boil down to various women having received unwanted icky attention and intimidation in hotel rooms (including nude-massage requests) plus corresponding payoffs or freeze-outs for women who refused or complained or threatened to go public.

All in all, for Miramax and Weinstein Co. female executives, interns, actresses and many others in between, Harvey’s unfortunate behavior resulted in “a toxic environment for women at this company,” as Lauren O’Connor, a former Weinstein Co. “creative executive” and book scout”, explained in a reported 2015 memo.

Paragraph #5: “An investigation by The New York Times found previously undisclosed allegations against Mr. Weinstein stretching over nearly three decades, documented through interviews with current and former employees and film industry workers, as well as legal records, emails and internal documents from the businesses he has run, Miramax and the Weinstein Company.”

This is the most damning portion of the piece: “’From the outside, it seemed golden — the Oscars, the success, the remarkable cultural impact,’ said Mark Gill, former president of Miramax Los Angeles, which was then owned by Disney. ‘But behind the scenes, it was a mess, and this was the biggest mess of all,’ he added, referring to Mr. Weinstein’s treatment of women.”

Perspective: The article claims that Weinstein was a sexually abusive boss in the ’90s, but nobody said anything back then. The piece lays out several allegations about his abusive ways having continued into the 21st Century, or roughly over the last 15 years. But nothing of serious force or blowback happened until today.

There are two reasons why. One, the power of the financially struggling Weinstein Co. has diminished to the point that people aren’t as afraid of Harvey now as they used to be. And two, a journalistic fuse has recently been lit about identifying sexual abusers and harassers and making them face the music, and today’s Harvey takedown piece is but the latest. More will presumably follow.

Is it appropriate for sexual harassers and abusers to be dragged before the court of public opinion and beaten with a cane? If they’re guilty, yes. What’s wrong is wrong, and cruel and/or abusive actions have consequences. But Harvey Weinstein is paying the current piper because he isn’t the economic titan he used to be, and because a general journalistic hunger for revenge is afoot right now, and it won’t be stilled any time soon.

Here’s Harvey’s response to the Times piece.

Dan Gilroy‘s Roman J. Israel, Esq. is “a whipsmart, cunningly performed, immensely satisfying film in so many ways. Such a skillful job of character-building on Gilroy’s part, layer upon layer and bit upon bit, and such a finely contoured performance by the great Denzel Washington. My only hang-up is that I wanted a different ending. Gilroy’s ending isn’t ‘bad’, per se, but I didn’t agree with it — I didn’t want it.

“Otherwise this is such a brilliant, invigorating and fully believable film for over-30s — milieu-wise, legal minutiae-wise, Asperger’s-wise. It’s my idea of pound cake topped with whipped cream and strawberries…give it to me. You can take a terrific bath in this film and never feel unsatisfied that the story isn’t quite delivering the way you want it to. Until the last 25 or 30 minutes, that is, but even then it’s not a fatal problem, just an air-escaping-the-balloon one.” — posted on 9.10.17 from the Toronto Film Festival.

As I noted last May, Robin Campillo‘s BPM (Beats Per Minute) (The Orchard, 10.20) is an impassioned, oppressively didactic period film (i.e., early ’90s) about Parisian ACT UP members battling bureaucratic indifference and/or foot-dragging in the battle against AIDS. It’s a tough, well-made, humanist thumbs-upper, but at the same time the relentless political-talking-points dialogue gradually numbs you out, and then drains you of your will to live.

At the risk of sounding insensitive or uncaring, Campillo’s hammer-focus on the French medical establishment’s slow-to-act response to the AIDS scourge is airless — it doesn’t breathe. BPM is a 144-minute gay agenda movie that says the right things, feels the right things and clobbers you over the head with its social-activist compassion and sense of life-or-death urgency. I for one staggered out of the Grand Lumiere theatre when it ended, gasping for breath and overjoyed that the lecture had finally ended.

I like my gay movies to feel swoony and speak softly — I want them to feel mellow and cultured and graced with the aroma of fine wine, fresh peaches and tall grass on a warm summer’s day. No offense but BPM is on the other side of the canyon, enraged and odorous and generally obnoxious. Thanks but no thanks.

Everyone knew that the recently released Bluray for Arthur Penn‘s Night Moves (’75) wouldn’t be all that spellbinding. Bruce Surtees‘ 35mm cinematography was never intended to be anything more than professionally presentable in a workmanlike fashion, and that was fine. But the Bluray definitely looks better than the various versions I’ve been watching for the last 35 years or so, including the ones offered on DVD and Amazon SD streaming. And that’s all I wanted anyway.