Are The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions (both released in ’03) the least satisfying, most ruinously awful sequels ever made? Not just because they blew chunks on their own terms, but they tarnished the reputation of The Matrix (’99), the perfect, almost-jewel-like original that launched the mini-franchise.

This led me to contemplate a list of stand-alone films that never should have given birth to a sequel or sequels or a spinoff TV series. The Jaws movies after Steven Spielberg‘s 1975 original. The Jurassic Park sequels. The Hangover sequels. The Terminator sequels. A voice is telling me Jim Cameron should have left Avatar alone and not gone on to commit to…what is it, three sequels? But of course everyone has written about these.

What about the reverse? What first-rate films that never inspired any follow-ups should have spawned a sequel or cable series? I honestly would’ve loved to see a Michael Clayton series on Showtime, Hulu or HBO, perhaps not with George Clooney in the title role but then again why not? He arguably delivered his career-best performance in Tony Gilroy’s 2007 legal thriller, and the film itself is surely his finest ever. I would’ve been down with a mid ’80s TV series about the continuing legal adventures of Frank Galvin, the wounded Boston attorney played by Paul Newman in The Verdict.

Which others?

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David Mackenzie‘s Outlaw King is obviously made in accordance with the traditional realism standards of Mel Gibson‘s Braveheart. Or, if you will, a lot more like Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood than Otto Bathurst‘s “rancid Hood fantasy,” as I put it several weeks ago.

I don’t know much about real-life murderers and serial killers, but I’ll bet very few if any were ever splattered with drops of victim blood, and if they were they washed the evidence right off or changed clothes PDQ. Also that aside from Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Gein and maybe one or two others, no murderer in the history of murder has ever been smeared with the stuff like strawberry jam.

But almost every movie character who commits a close-up killing in a film these days becomes a son or daughter of Leatherface — i.e., painted with red vino. And they never wash it off. A bullshit affectation. New HE rule: the more bloodspots on an actor’s face or clothing, the worse a violent movie is. I recall Dustin Hoffman being a tad blood-spattered in the last act of Straw Dogs, but Anthony Perkins never got a drop on him in Psycho.

The most famous real-life person to not wash blood off or change clothing after a killing? Jackie Kennedy.

34 years ago I was working as a non-staff regular for the p.r. department at the Samuel Goldwyn Company, writing press kits and whatnot. One day we all watched Michael Radford‘s Nineteen Eighty-Four, which hadn’t yet found a distributor. (Or so I recall.) The general consensus was that it was a respectable, well-performed thing (by John Hurt and especially Richard Burton), etc. My own view was that alongside THX-1138, which covered similar turf, it was overly dark, slow and funereal. Not much of a pulse.

After the screening we were asked for our impressions, going around the table like in Twelve Angry Men. During the screening I could feel acute frustration from a sales distribution guy, but when his turn came he played it safe and said “good film, great performances, possibly tough sell,” blah blah. When it was my turn I called it “a movie for dead people.” Somebody coughed. Later that afternoon the marketing guy motioned me into his office, gave me a brah poke and said “Thank you, Jeff, for saying that.”

Nobody ever said what they really felt at that fucking company. About anything. More than half of the daily energy went into playing political whisper games. Staffers scheming and plotting against other staffers in order to strengthen their position. It was a wonderful place to work.

Tom Cruise: “I want the truth!”
Rudy Giuliani: “Truth isn’t truth, Tom! Seriously. Truth is a thread that you first have to fit into the eye of the needle, and then it gets even more complicated. You don’t wanna know.”
Tom Cruise: “That’s your answer?”

In the comment thread of yesterday’s “It’s A Little Early But…” post, esteemed Los Angeles Daily News critic Bob Strauss facetiously remarked that it’s “so exciting that all these movies nobody’s seen are gonna win Oscars…snore.”

HE reply: “Mr. Strauss knows exactly what knowledgable, insect-antennae spitballing is about. He knows that, as with every early Best Picture forecast, some will fall out, many will hold and one or two will surge. He knows that five or six films — Roma, The Favourite, Backseat, Green Book, A Star Is Born, First Man — will almost certainly become Best Picture contenders. He KNOWS this, and yet he pretends that it’s all hot-air guesswork and flim flam and gas. What he means is that he doesn’t care for the game, which is totally fine. But I know what’s going on here for the most part. I can spot the bread crumbs, sniff the vapor trails and sense what will probably come down the pike. For I am the Great Carnovsky, complete with robe and wizard hat.”

I’ve been putting off seeing John Chu‘s Crazy Rich Asians for the last two or three weeks. Now it’s Sunday and I can’t dodge it any longer. I’ll be seeing it this afternoon. Dentist’s office, root canal, chalk on a blackboard, etc. The opening weekend gross for this all-Asian, Singapore-set comedy is likely to be $25.2M and $34M over five days. It’ll easily top $100M before all is said and done. Quite the historical landmark.

The idea of sitting through a real-estate porn movie filled with scheming family members fills me with dread. I will, of course, report otherwise if it turns out to be tolerable or half-enjoyable or whatever.

From Kate Taylor‘s Globe & Mail review: “Generously you might say Crazy Rich Asians is a satire of Chinese family values and the social strata of the overseas Chinese — as well as a major spoof of the ornate decorative tastes of the moneyed class — but the larger society is missing from the picture. [And] as the obscenities of wealth accumulate while a large cast of Asian and Eurasian actors render their many silly characters, the source of the laughter becomes troubling.

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Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil has asked the usual panel of Oscar experts to spitball their Best Picture predictions. Except he hasn’t created an experts chart so I’ll pass for now. I’ll say four things. One, a couple of films on this list of twelve haven’t a chance. Two, Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book may need to be added — we’ll see. Three, Spike Lee‘s BlackKKlansman is in because Spike’s been slamming hits for 35 years without an Oscar, much less a Best Director nomination, to show for it. And four, it’s probably going to boil down to Roma vs. The Favourite vs. Backseat vs. A Star Is Born. Or something like that.

Posted on 1.22.18: Earlier today I saw Amy Scott‘s Hal, a smart, comprehensive doc that sent some mixed signals. By which I mean it could or should have been a little tougher than it is. I’m not saying that a director pulling his or her punches is a great crime, but viewers can always sense when they’ve done this.

The story of Hal Ashby‘s Hollywood career — assistant editor in the ’50s, Norman Jewison’s editor in the ’60s, influential director of seven great films in the ’70s, an angry and declining director of mediocre films in the ’80s — is exhilarating, colorful and not, if you’re going to be honest (as Nick Dawson‘s “Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel” was and is), altogether tidy or pretty.

My sense of Hal, as much as I enjoyed it, is that every so often it’s a little too gentle.

Scott has covered the chapters in dutiful form, and spoken to a few people who really loved and admired Hal, or at least worship his legacy. Her film moves right along, pushes more than a few emotional buttons, and makes you feel as if you’ve come to know the guy pretty well. I liked it just fine, but a little voice kept whispering that Scott has softballed the extent of Ashby’s cocaine and booze problems during his career-decline period.

Yes, he rarely slept and probably worked harder than anyone, and he had an awful time with the corporate-minded studio heads in the ’80s (particularly with Lorimar). A lot of stress and struggle. I’m not saying Ashby was a total druggie, but no one dies at age 59 unless they’ve been doing something to hasten their decline.

With any kind of half-fair perspective, Ashby’s decade of ’70s glory definitely out-classes and outweighs the tragedy of the ’80s and how the derangement of nose candy enveloped and swallowed the poor guy. But you have to get into that downswirl stuff a little bit.

Scott’s film isn’t hagiography, but my sense is that roughly 90% is a touching, fascinating, no-holds-barred, this-is-who-he-really-was portrait and the other 10% is a little blowjobby here and there.

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I love standing on Manhattan subway platforms when the street temperature is in the mid 90s, which always makes it a little bit hotter down below. Of course I can take it. I eat suffocating atmospheric experiences like this for breakfast. A point of pride.