Francis Coppola‘s The Cotton Club Encore, an expanded and allegedly improved 139-minute version of the original 1984 film, played twice at last weekend’s Telluride Film Festival. I couldn’t fit it into my schedule, and I can’t find any reviews from any reputable or tough-minded critics whom I respect. Nor can I trust Jim Hemphill’s enthusiastic 9.6 review, which claims that the new cut is a “masterpiece”. But I’m certainly intrigued.

I didn’t care much for the original version, which I saw only once about 33 years ago. But Coppola’s new cut is said to feature more music and dancing, and to be less white, and less focused upon the romantic relationship between the two lead characters, played by Richard Gere and Diane Lane. It may do the trick and it may not, but who wouldn’t want to see it?

Coppola spent $500,000 out of his own pocket to create this new version. The restoration effort took four years, I’ve been told, and was completed about six months ago. Coppola was inspired after seeing an old Betamax version of an original cut that he liked better than the ’84 theatrical version.

Coppola archivist James Mockoski explained this morning that Coppola removed about 13 minutes of footage for the original 127-minute version, which took it down to 114 minutes or thereabouts. Roughly 25 minutes of new footage was added for a grand total of 139 minutes.

So why isn’t The Cotton Club Encore playing at the Toronto Film Festival or the forthcoming New York Film Festival? You’re not going to believe this, but the reason is MGM CEO Gary Barber, the same obstinate asshole who has blocked Robert Harris‘s long-hoped-for restoration of John Wayne‘s The Alamo.

MGM is the Cotton Club rights-holder, you see, and Barber, true to form, has not only objected to the film being shown in any kind of commercial venue (such as TIFF or NYFF) but is also uninterested in distributing or streaming Coppola’s expanded version, even though Coppola has paid for the whole thing.

Barber could theoretically (a) allow for a brief theatrical re-release of The Cotton Club Encore or (b) issue it on Bluray or via Amazon/iTunes streaming or (c) at least sub-license the home video rights to Criterion or some other dedicated, film-loving outfit. But the South African-born executive reportedly has no interest, just as he’s refused to even discuss the Alamo situation with Harris.

I heard several weeks ago that the version of Ruben Ostland‘s The Square (Magnolia, 10.27) that was shown during last May’s Cannes Film Festival (and which resulted in a Palme d’Or win) has been edited slightly. The Wiki page says it runs 142 minutes but the Toronto Film festival page says 145 minutes. A Magnolia guy told me today that Cannes version actually ran around 149 minutes, and that Ostlund cut four to bring it down to 145.

From my Cannes Film Festival review: “The Square is a longish but exquisitely dry Swedish satire, mostly set among the wealthy, museum-supporting class in Stockholm. It’s basically a serving of deft, just-right comic absurdity (the high points being two scenes in which refined p.c. swells are confronted with unruly social behaviors) that works because of unforced, low-key performances and restrained, well-honed dialogue.

“Ostlund’s precise and meticulous handling is exactly the kind of tonal delivery that I want from comedies. There isn’t a low moment (i.e., aimed at the animals) in all of The Square, whereas many if not most American comedies are almost all low moments.

“The problem is that The Square stops being a perfect absurdist satire somewhere around the two-thirds or three-quarters mark and downshifts into a glumly moralistic thing that’s about the lead character (played by the handsome, Pierce Brosnan-ish Claes Bang) trying to face up to his errors and make things right.

“There are four stand-out moments: a post-coital confrontation moment with Elizabeth Moss, an interview with a visiting artist (Dominic West) interrupted by a guy with Tourette’s syndrome, the already notorious black-tie museum dinner ‘ape man’ scene with simian-channeller Terry Notary, and a hilariously over-provocative YouTube ad showing a little girl and a kitten being blown to bits.

“Yesterday Jordan Ruimy tweeted that The Square is Leo Carax‘s Holy Rollers mixed with Maren Ade‘s Toni Erdmann. Except I didn’t find Erdmann even vaguely funny (for me Peter Simonischek‘s performance was painful) and I was constantly chuckling and chortling during The Square, so what does that say? I’ll tell you what it says: Fuck Toni Erdmann, although I’m certainly open to the Jack Nicholson-starring remake, if and when it actually happens.”

Attention Darren Aronofsky loyalists: The word has gone out that mother! is an allegory about something or other. Climate change, haunted Biblical prophecy, invasive social-media malevolence, a personal Aronofsky confession…you tell me. It’s not about the images, behaviors and disturbances presented on the screen, but whatever may be suggested or implied by same. Go to town and kick it around, but don’t limit yourself solely to the visual and aural content.

Ben Croll’s 9.6 Indiewire review (“Aronofsky’s Audacious and Rich Cinematic Allegory Is His Most Daring Film Yet”) is one manifestation of this mode of absorption. As Croll writes, “Come for the house that bleeds; stay for the reflections on parenthood and the difficulty of living with fame.”

Excerpt #1: “Awash in both religious and contemporary political imagery, Aronofsky’s allusive film opens itself to a number of allegorical readings, but it also works as a straight-ahead head rush. Not just another baroquely orchestrated big-screen freak-out in the vein of Black Swan (though it is very much that), the film touches on themes that — if too hazily figurative to be in any way autobiographical — at least tread on factors in the director’s own life.

Excerpt #2: “The film is divided into two parts that roughly parallel one another for reasons that eventually make themselves clear. Both follow married couple Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem (and yes, their nearly 20-year age gap is an important and oft-commented upon plot point), who go unnamed as a way of telegraphing that they’re meant to represent Bigger Things.”

Excerpt #3: “Aronofsky and Paramount have launched one of the more secretive marketing campaigns in recent memory, which is odd because “mother!” is a not a particularly twisty-turny affair. Both parts of the film play out like the first few chapters of The Hobbit, where a growing number of unexpected guests pop in to break the leads’ bucolic solitude, and twist them toward different ends.”

Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers has seen Richard Linklater‘s Last Flag Flying (debuting at New York Film Festival), Woody Allen‘s Wonder Wheel (ditto) and Alfonso Gomez Rejon‘s The Current War (TIFF). Here are his observations:

Last Flag Flying: “Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell and Laurence Fishburne all hit acting peaks in Richard Linklater’s look at three military buddies still trying to heal psychic wounds three decades after they served together in Vietnam. The trio is forced to reunite after years apart, however, when Carell’s son dies while fighting in Iraq. It’s the mission of these middle-aged men to bring the boy home for burial. The Boyhood director’s latest is a triumph that also features stellar newcomer J. Quinton Johnson (Everybody Wants Some) as a young marine.” Wells reaction: An acting “triumph” or a general triumph all around? Too vague.

The Current War: “How will today’s audiences, with notoriously short attention spans, react to a century-old battle between Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) over whose electrical system was better? For those who think AC/DC is just an Australian rock band, this period piece will be an education — though not a dull one. As directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) from a script by playwright Michael Mitnick (Sex Lives of Our Parents), this drama bursts with cinematic energy and is fueled by a plot as relevant as who’s building the next and best smartphone app. As for Cumberbatch and Shannon, they’re acting titans.” Wells reaction: Travers seems to imply that it’s strictly for 45-plus viewers due to Millenials not being the slightest bit interested.

Hollywood Elsewhere’s Porter flight arrived in Toronto around 3 pm or thereabouts. I went straight to the Airbnb at 74 Oxford Street in the Kensington district, which may be my favorite Toronto neighborhood of all time. I picked up the press pass and other materials at the Bell Lightbox around 5 pm, and then hung in the press room until the 7 pm closing. I guess I’ll grab a salad and plan the next few days.

HE’s own Tatyana Antropova, taken as we left Telluride early Monday afternoon. The drive back to Albuquerque took five and a half hours.

I won’t be seeing Darren Aronofsky‘s mother! until Sunday morning (9.10), but I’m loving how it’s provoking intense reactions. From Daily Beast critic Marlow Stern: “This is a film designed to fuck with you. And fuck with you it does.”

The Playlist‘s Jessica Kiang: “An incendiary religious allegory, a haunted-house horror, a psychological head trip so extreme it should carry a health warning and an apologia for crimes of the creative ego past and not yet committed, it’s not just Aronofsky’s most bombastic, ludicrous and fabulous film, spiked with a kind of reckless, go-for-broke, leave-it-all-up-there-on-the-screen abandon, it is simply one of the most films ever.”

mother! director Darren Aronofsky, snapped a day or so ago at the Venice Film Festival.

There’s a paragraph in Todd McCarthy‘s THR review that strikes me as one of the most damning descriptions of of a reputable name-brand filmmaker that I’ve ever read by a reputable name-brand critic.

“Beyond the climactic free-for-all lunacy, this seems above all a portrait of an artist who has untethered himself from any and all moral responsibility,” McCarthy writes, “one so consumed by his own ego and sense of creative importance that he’s come to believe that nothing and no one remotely competes with the importance of his work.”

In other words, McCarthy is saying, Aronofsky is some kind of sociopath. This obviously argues with Aronofksy’s claim that mother! is meant to be some kind of climate-change allegory. If I were Aronofsky I would write a THR guest editorial and spell things out, especially about the necessary task of provocation that most major-league artists try to live up to.

Naturally, the McCarthy review makes me want to see mother! all the more.

I saw IT (Warner Bros., 9.8) last night, and I’m sorry but it’s shit. Did I just say that? Would it sound less damning if I called it an IT sandwich?

What I mean is that the movie I saw at Loews Lincoln Square felt like shit to me — professionally polished but with a sensibility that felt coarse and calculating to a fare-thee-well. It’s basically a low-rent scare-a-thon for the none-too-brights… tediously familiar (small Maine town, Stephen King porridge, pre-teen pallies doing the Stand By Me thing) and strictly aimed at those who need a “holy shit!” or “oh, Jesus, that was gross!” moment every five or six minutes.

Sorry, dude, but I have aesthetic standards. IT radiates pro-level assurance from a character, dialogue and general compositional standpoint, but the spooky/scary moments (most of which involve Bill Skarsgård‘s demonic clown, i.e., “Pennywise”) are used too often, and are too in-your-face.

As scary flicks go I prefer subtle chills and tingles (the kind that producer Val Lewton provided in the ’40s, and which 21st Century audiences encountered in Andy Muschietti‘s Mama, Robert Eggers‘ The Witch and Jennifer Kent‘s The Babadook) rather than torrents of blood gushing out of a bathroom sink. 

I recognize that most American moviegoers love the blood-torrents approach, and that mine is a minority view. Nonetheless there’s no question that (a) I have better taste in scary cinema, and (b) that most American horror fans are popcorn-munching boobs.

IT is expected to make at least $60 million this weekend and possibly earn three times that overall. This tells you a lot about the taste levels of your average American moviegoer.

I was cautiously optimistic before last night’s showing because of Muschietti’s direction. I was expecting or at least hoping that he might duplicate some of those subtle, fleeting, spine-chill moments that he and producer Guillermo del Toro brought to Mama. No such luck. 

Muschietti’s thinking seems to have been “if I play it too adult and classy, the fans of Walmart-level horror films will tune out. I have to keep goosing them, over and over…one shock moment every few minutes. If the dumbshits don’t tell their friends that it’s their kind of horror film, IT will go belly-up and I may have a bit of difficulty scoring my next highly-paid gig.”

I’m presuming that Muschietti was leaned on by three IT producers with flagrantly non–Val Lewtonish instincts — Roy Lee (The Grudge, The Ring), Don Lin (Gangster Squad, Lego Movie, Lego Batman Movie) and Seth Grahame-Smith (author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter). In my mind these guys are demonic — the devil incarnate.

Arrow Academy’s Bluray of Robert Aldrich, James Poe and Clifford Odets‘ The Big Knife popped on 8.28. DVD Beaver screen-capture comparisons show that the Bluray looks much better than the 2003 DVD. The sore spot is the cropping — the Bluray uses a 1.85 cleavered image while the DVD went with a standard mid ’50s boxy format. Consider the comparison framings of a scene between Jack Palance and Shelley Winters [below]. If you think the cleavered Bluray image is preferable, there’s really something wrong with you. Obviously being able to see Palance’s hair and sideburns…either you get it or you don’t.

Posted on 1.2.17: Dee Rees‘ Mudbound (Netflix, 11.17), a ’40s period piece about racial relations amid cotton farmers toiling in the hardscrabble South, bears more than a few resemblances to Robert Benton‘s Places In the Heart (’84).

The latter is far, far superior — better story, more skillfully written, more emotionally affecting. But three Mudbound performances — given by Carey Mulligan, Mary J. Blige and Jason Mitchell — are quite special and almost redeeming.

Based on Hillary Jordan‘s 2008 novel, Mudbound (adapted by TV writer-producer Virgil Williams) is about the relations between the white McAllans, owners of a shithole cotton farm (no plumbing or electricity) in the muddy Mississippi delta, and their black tenant-farmer neighbors, the Jacksons, in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

The McAllans are composed of paterfamilias Henry McAllan (a sullen, beefy-looking Jason Clarke), his city-bred wife Laura (Mulligan), their two kids, Henry’s racist dad (Jonathan Banks) and Henry’s younger brother, Jamie (Garrett Hedlund), who recently served as a bombardier during the war in Europe.

The Jackson principals are Hap (Rob Morgan), his wife Florence (Blige) and their oldest son Ronsel (Mitchell), also a recently returned WWII veteran.

Jamie and Ronsel relate to each other because of their similar age, shared war experience and not being as tied to regional racial traditions, and Laura is obviously a more refined and compassionate person than her somewhat grunty husband. But the low-rent, under-educated delta atmosphere represses like a sonuvabitch, and from the moment the McAllans arrive you’re thinking “wait, I’m stuck in this hellish mudflat environment for the rest of the film?”

You’re also thinking “why has Mulligan decided to marry the pudgy, ape-like Clarke — she could obviously do better.”

Yes, Mudbound has a heart and a soul and a compassionate view of things. But my mantra as I watched it was “lemme outta here, lemme outta here, lemme outta here, lemme outta here, lemme outta here,” etc.

“Tell me you haven’t predicted Best Picture status for The Battle of the Sexes,” I texted a friend this morning. “Or called it the leading Best Picture contender out of Telluride. 

“It’s an acceptable, good-enough film with five or six good scenes. But it’s no more than that, or certainly not in the view of the Telluride chattering class. It’s fine as far as it goes and sufficient for what it tries to do, but nobody I spoke to last weekend was over the moon about it, and a few were underwhelmed.”

The person I texted replied that she hadn’t called The Battle of the Sexes the leading Best Picture candidate out of Telluride, and only that it could (as opposed to would or should) win the Best Picture Oscar. 

Trust me, that’s a very flimsy possibility.

In the HE realm the definite contenders right now are Dunkirk, Lady Bird, Call Me By Your Name, probably The Post and possibly Darkest Hour. 

As acceptable and moderately satisfying as The Battle of the Sexes is, it doesn’t begin to possess those X-factor attributes that often or usually propel a film into Best Picture contention.

And you can probably forget The Shape of Water also. I’m starting to think that the raves out of Venice are going to gradually subside and that more level-headed voices (i.e., fewer fanboys) will start to dominate the conversation. The great Sally Hawkins will almost certainly land a Best Actress nomination, but the film…well, we’ll see.

Other Best Picture potentials: Mudbound, Phantom Thread, Roman Israel, Esq., The Big Sick. Not happening: Downsizing, Wonder Woman, Wonderstruck, Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Why isn’t there a film as good as Moneyball opening this fall? Some kind of adult, male-centric, amply-funded middle-class movie that really rings the bell, I mean. A film as superbly written, I mean, and directed (by the great Bennett Miller) and scored with such delicacy and finesse (by Mychael Danna). And cut with such confidence and with just the right portions of smarts, charisma, undercurrents and misty-eyed emotion.

Posted on 9.7.11, “Moneyball is mystical, statistical, spooky, emotional and wonderfully original. And wonderfully ‘pure’ in a sense. The complexity mixed with the spirituality and the political reality of things…just brilliant.”

Moneyball opened close to a decade go, and that seems like a century ago in terms of what’s getting made these days and where the Hollywood culture is at and who’s investing in what. I’m very, very afraid that American megaplex flicks like Moneyball (i.e., ones that might turn out just as well) are never even getting their chance at bat.