Summer Summary: Shiners, Stinkers & Overrated Thuds

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Let’s get something straight right off the bat. Two of the best films of the 2018 summer season were not fucking Avengers: Infinity War or Ant Man and the Wasp…Jesus. The latter was reasonably decent and amusing as far as it went, but it was no Ant Man, and the former was agony to sit through. Plus that ending in which Thanos manages to turn almost everyone into sand and blow them into the wind machine…bullshit. The Marvel franchise has never respected death, and it never will.

HE’s ten best films of the summer (if you define “summer” as May 1st through August 31st): Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed, Bjorn Runge‘s The Wife, Ari Aster‘s Hereditary, Stefano Sollima‘s Sicario — Day of the Soldado, Chris McQuarrie and Tom Cruise‘s Mission : Impossible — Fallout, Eugene Jarecki‘s The King, Jeremiah Zagar‘s We The Animals, Bo Burnham‘s Eighth Grade, Morgan Neville‘s Won’t You Be My Neighbor, and Matt Tyrnauer‘s Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood.

Spike Lee‘s BlackKklansman is a decent…okay, above-average police caper hoodwink flick with a great, balls-to-the-wall, Trump-blasting finale. The general response was thumbs up enough to suggest that Lee might snag a Best Director nomination, and after 35 years of banging out distinctive, high-style movies and many with something to say, he deserves it.

Boots Riley‘s Sorry To Bother You “is a piece of wildly-out-there satire that warrants everyone’s attention and respect. I laughed from time to time and admired the Brittania Hospital-meets-Idiocracy surrealism, but I just didn’t care for the Oakland prison colony vibe (especially after sitting through the tedious, Oakland-based Blindspotting). As much as I got off on Riley’s edge and flamboyance and inventive sidestepping of the usual-usual, I didn’t want to ‘live’ in this film. And that’s a key thing” — from my 8.2.18 review.

Carlos Lopez Estrada and Daveed Diggs‘ Blindspotting isn’t good enough. It over-emphasizes, underlines, over-explains, assumes the audience needs help. Rafael Casal‘s portrayal of Diggs’ best friend, a violent, hair-trigger, gun-wielding asshole who’s always threatening to start shit about the slightest personal offense or otherwise do something that might attract the attention of the bulls, is intolerable. The 32 year-old playwright relies on a broad caricature of Oakland street blackitude — machismo shit talk, constant strut, a mouthful of gold fillings, flashing pistols, drop-of-a-hat hostility, etc.

It’s my view that while the hugely popular Crazy Rich Asians is occasionally diverting (especially during the first 30 minutes or so), it was nonetheless made by and for synthetic money whores. As I said ten days ago, it’s “a satire of the aggressively shallow values of the highly insecure moneyed classes of southeast Asia, but the satire doesn’t cut very deep because the film shares these values and in fact adores them…each and every shot is about showcasing obscenely flush, over-the-top flamboyance (clothes, homes, interior designs), and by the one-hour mark the spirit weakens and the nausea kicks in.”

What did I miss that’s worth mentioning? Even to put down?

That’s It?

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I’m sorry but I’m getting the wrong kind of signals from this barely-there teaser for Brady Corbet‘s Vox Lux, a seemingly angst-ridden music-industry drama that focuses on 18 years in the life of Celeste, a gloomhead pop superstar (Natalie Portman). I don’t mean the kind of signals that suggest a possibly bad or frothy or ineffective film (I read a draft of the script a year or so ago and it wasn’t half bad), but indications that some of us may not give that much of a shit.

Making it in the music business is no small feat, and lasting, much less maintaining relevancy, in the limelight for over 15 years is even tougher, and so I vaguely resent films that suggest superstardom is mainly about having great hair and the right kind of wardrobe and expert lighting design and multitudes screaming your name.

Put another way, I vaguely resent movies about hugely popular performers that fail to convey how difficult it is to be even a competent, half-decent musician-performer (I’m saying this as a formerly mediocre drummer), much less fulfill a phenomenal potential. Geniuses don’t have to sweat the inspiration part, but they still have to work and perspire their asses off to make the song (or the novel or the film or the haute couture line) come out right. Movies always seem to ignore the creative struggle aspect.

Oh, and a Scott Walker score isn’t enough. There has to be a good, solid film to complement his input…sorry.

Corbet’s 110-minute drama, currently without distribution, will premiere soon at the Venice Film Festival. Raffey Cassidy, Jude Law, Stacy Martin and Jennifer Ehle costar.

Word Around Venice Campfire

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There are always two or three films that run into critical difficulty at any Venice Film Festival. I’ve already noted that Jennifer Kent‘s The Nightingale may (I say “may”) encounter some degree of pushback. I heard a while back that Damien Chazelle‘s First Man may be principally appreciated for its technical chops. I was told yesterday that a film I won’t name is “a third-rate wannabe Kubrick” that nonetheless “will be highly praised.” It’s been further asserted that Laszlo Nemes‘ Sunset (a Cannes snub) and Florian von Henckel Donnersmark‘s Never Look Away (aka Work Without Author) may encounter mixed responses. Who knows?

The late afternoon sun is beginning to set on the Venice lagoon, the vaporetti are chug-chugging back and forth between the main city and the Lido, and credentialed critics (including Variety‘s Guy Lodge) are unpacking their bags, sharpening their #2 pencils and thinking about where to get dinner. It all begins tomorrow morning at 8:30 am with an early-bird-catches-the-worm press screening of First Man.

This Is Their Solution? Murder Roseanne?

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In a Sunday Times interview Roseanne costar John Goodman said that Roseanne Barr’s character will be “killed off” in the upcoming spinoff series, to be called The Conners. Goodman said that his character, Dan, will “be mopey and sad because his wife’s dead.”

Does this strike anyone as a clever, catchy way to dispose of Roseanne’s character? Kill her like some Cuban assassin in a Scarface remake? Or what…give her cancer or something?

HE solution: Roseanne has left Dan for a Russian mobster, whom she met during a visit to see relatives in Chicago. The Russian boyfriend didn’t propose marriage but insisted that Roseanne divorce Dan so she’d be free to move with him to Moscow. The Russian guy is super-rich, but it’s not all hearts and flowers because he’s into whips, chains, bondage and discipline, which Roseanne has a problem with. But in for a penny, in for a pound.

Pizzolatto Legacy

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Have we forgotten already what a wipeout True Detective became during its second season? In my book creator, co-writer and sometime director Nic Pizzolatto committed career hari kiri with that godforsaken series, which costarred Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams, Taylor Kitsch and Kelly Reilly. The awe and respect everyone felt for Cary Fukunaga‘s season #1 (Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson) was wiped off the books by season #2 and then some. I’m not saying I won’t watch season #3, which costars Mahershala Ali, Ray Fisher, Carmen Ejogo, Stephen Dorff, Scoot McNairy and Mamie Gummer, but I’m very, very skeptical. The HBO series will premiere in January 2019.

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Bruh Current

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During the late Dubya years I needed to settle upon an acceptable substitute for “man” (’50s, 60s, 70s) or “dude” (late ’80s, ’90s) or “bro,” which I always hated with a passion**. Sometime around ’06 I decided to give “dawg” a try, but I was immediately mocked (white guy using South Central terminology). I continued to use “dawg” in mock ironic fashion, but I more or less backed off. Two or three years ago I sidestepped into “brah”, but I’ve lately been favoring “bruh.” Here’s a three-year-old languagejones.com chart that conveyed the regional popularity of “brah,” “bruh” and “breh”. In all seriousness and no kidding around, it’s kinda more “bruh” than “brah” now…right?

** If “bro” ever had any cachet, it quickly died after the “don’t taze me, bro” incident at the University of Florida.

War-Zone Risk Junkie

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Matthew Heineman‘s A Private War (Aviron, 11.2) is some kind of high-anxiety, razor’s-edge saga of late war-zone journalist Marie Colvin. Rosamund Pike gets to play tough and tenacious with a Long John Silver eye patch, and Jamie Dornan tries to wash off the Fifty Shades of Grey stain by going all indie-gritty.

Written by Arash Amel, and based on a Marie Brenner Vanity Fair piece called “Marie Colvin’s Private War.”

On 2.22.12 Colvin was killed by shrapnel in the western region of Holms, Jordan. Her Wiki page says that “lawyers representing Colvin’s family filed a civil action in 2016 against the government of the Syrian Arab Republic for extrajudicial killing, claiming they had obtained proof that the Syrian government had directly ordered Colvin’s targeted assassination. In April 2018, the accusations were revealed on court papers filed by her family.”

A Private War will sidestep the prestigious early-fall festivals (Venice, Telluride, Toronto, New York) in order to have its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival.

The 11.2 limited release will be followed by an expansion on 11.16. Pic costars Stanley Tucci, Tom Hollander and Corey Johnson. The dp is Robert Richardson.

“Spitoonia!”

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What do you wanna bet that My Dinner With Herve (HBO, 10.20), a film about Fantasy Island star Herve Villechaize (Peter Dinklage) recalling his life in an interview with a journalist (Jamie Dornan), will completely ignore what I regard as Villechaize’s funniest, strangest performance? I mean his gay Mexican character in Robert Downey Sr.‘s Greaser’s Palace (’72), who’s in and out in the space of a single five-minute scene.

“Nick Nack”, Christopher Lee‘s manservant, in The Man With The Golden Gun plus “Tattoo” in Fantasy Island…that’s all Vellechaize admirers ever talk about.

For those who’ve never seen Greaser’s Place, it doesn’t quite work unless you watch it totally ripped.

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This Film For Remastering

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Frank Tuttle‘s This Gun For Hire (’42) is primarily a violent thriller, but the combination of frostiness and vulnerability in Alan Ladd‘s Raven, a professional assassin, feeds into a vibe of brusque indifference and existential despair. Released two years before Billy Wilder‘s Double Indemnity, I’ve always regarded This Gun For Hire as the first high-impact film noir. Which puts it into the pantheon of 1940s releases. Pretty much every film-loving dweeb subscribes to this view.

But for some odd reason Universal has never released a Bluray or streamed it in HD. Here we are in 2018, and the only way to watch this still engrossing, hard-boiled drama is on that same shitty DVD Universal released 14 years ago. Why don’t they get the lead out and remaster it? It would be fairly criminal to just let it remain a 480p experience.

Ladd’s breakout performance made him a big star, but his flush days lasted only about 15 years, give or take. The poor guy died at age 50, of an accidental suicide in January of ’64.

“Once Ladd had acquired an unsmiling hardness, he was transformed from an extra to a phenomenon. Ladd’s calm slender ferocity make it clear that he was the first American actor to show the killer as a cold angel.” – David Thomson, “A Biographical Dictionary of Film.”

“One shudders to think of the career which Paramount must have in mind for Alan Ladd, a new actor, after witnessing the young gentleman’s debut in This Gun for Hire… Obviously, they’ve tagged him to be the toughest monkey loose on the screen. For not since Jimmy Cagney massaged Mae Clarke‘s face with a grapefruit has a grim desperado gunned his way into cinema ranks with such violence as does Mr. Ladd in this fast and exciting melodrama. Keep your eye peeled for this Ladd fellow; he’s a pretty-boy killer who likes his work…Mr. Ladd is the buster; he is really an actor to watch.” — from Bosley Crowther‘s review of This Gun For Hire (’42).

He Knew From New York Jewish Neurotics

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The great Neil Simon has passed at the age of 91. Great as in hugely popular, prolific, hard-working, driven. I always admired his success and relentless output and came to respect some of his more mature material of the ’70s and ’80s, but I never regarded him as a heavyweight. Which he didn’t need to be because he was “Neil Simon.”

I was always impressed and often amused by Simon’s screenplays, which were usually adaptations of his hit Broadway plays, but I never thought they were profoundly moving or emotionally devastating or anything in that realm. They were mostly safe, likable and easily digestible stories about middle-class relationships (love affairs, marriages, families) for all ages but mostly for people born between the 1920s to the mid ’40s, or those who came of age with a “life can be brutally hard” sensibility that definitely resulted in a pre-boomer attitude.

Born in 1927, Simon grew up during the Depression and World War II and obviously believed that the gift of laughter was worth its weight in gold. His plays were never silly or juvenile and occasionally had bite and tension, but they were always “likable” and uplifting. Simon was a smart, very shrewd guy who used his life experience (struggling New York Jewish) to propel and sharpen his stories, but he always needed to entertain. And that he did. He wrote clean and true and, having come from TV comedy in the ’50s, knew about timing and pacing. His dialogue always felt “written,” but in a pleasingly professional way.

Simon was always a New York playwright first and a Hollywood screenwriter second.

A few months ago I re-watched Gene Saks‘ adaptation of Barefoot in the Park (’67), which Simon wrote in the very early ’60s (which were basically the ’50s extended up until the Kennedy assassination) and which opened on Broadway in October 1963. Costarring Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, Mildred Natwick and Charles Boyer, it’s very easy, witty and unthreatening. Always alert and “real” as far as it went, and never tiresome or lacking in pep.

As a failed screenwriter I know something about how difficult it is to write well and concisely while generating laughs and sustaining dramatic tension, and so I have nothing but respect for that play and film. But there’s nothing earth-shattering about it.

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