Last night I tried to catch a 7 pm all-media screening of Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom (Universal, 6.22) at the AMC Century City, but I almost didn’t make it. It happened in theatre #2, where two previous screenings had occured at 10 am and 3 pm. I arrived around…oh, 6:50 pm but all the seats seemed to be taken. I asked a Universal staffer if I should leave and she said, “No, no…we’ll figure it out.” Things didn’t look at all hopeful.

On top of which the crowd looked kind of mongrelish to me — overweight, T-shirts, jeans and sweat pants. There were a lot of kids there, and they all seemed to be wolfing down popcorn, candy and super-size soft drinks. A typical mall mob, the kind you’d see at Magic Mountain or Disneyland or Knotts Berry Farm. A thought went through me — “Do I want to sit with these awful-looking people? I don’t see any of my critic friends here. This is not my kind of scene.”

But I shook myself out of that mindset, manned up and decided to do my job, even without a seat. After a while I walked up the left-side aisle and sat down on the steps.

Ten seconds later a nice 30ish woman said, “We have a seat here.” It was five or six in from the aisle. “Oh…thank you so much!,” I said. I shuffled my way in and sat down, and right away felt a twinge of concern. On my right was a 20something woman of no particular distinction, but to my left…good God…was a Jabba-sized Latina who was sitting with a similar-sized friend. And Jabba latina was eating, eating and eating. The movie began and she kept chowing down like someone who hadn’t eaten in days.

Her first course was some kind of chicken salad, tomato and cucumber dish inside a deep plastic container. Then came the second course — a butter-soaked tub of popcorn and a big slurpy drink. Then she opened up a bag of Doritos.

I didn’t say a word. I didn’t give her the HE stink-eye. I just sat there like a sphinx and tried to concentrate on the film. But every now and then I snuck a peek.

I couldn’t ignore the fact that Jabba Latina’s reactions were extremely coarse and downmarket. I was reminded of those close-ups of Collisseum cheap-seat serfs watching Christians get eaten in Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Sign of the Cross.

Every time a person got eaten by a dinosaur, Jabba Latina went “oooh, hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” Movies like Fallen Kingdom are obviously made with this kind of person in mind. She really loved the huge alligator-like dino that leapt out of the sea to eat a squealing 20something guy who was trying to climb into a hovering helicopter — “Eeeeee-hee-hah-hah!” Anything and everything that happened of a stupid or low-rent or pandering nature, Jabba #1 was in movie heaven.

Yes, I focused on the film and took mental notes all through it, but I couldn’t completely divorce myself from the Jabba Latina factor. I mostly pushed it aside but I kept twitching when she laughed. I’ve said this dozens of times over the years, but hell is truly other people.

In David Lowery‘s The Old Man and the Gun, Redford plays the real-life Forrest Tucker, a career criminal and prison escape artist. It looks and sounds like good, well-mannered fun. I don’t really believe the elderly Redford (turning 82 in August) as a hardcore bank robber, but the trick of these films is to nudge you into going along despite your reluctance. Casey Affleck, Sissy Spacek, Danny Glover, Tika Sumpter, Tom Waits and Elisabeth Moss costar.

A couple of months ago I wrote that the last really good old-criminal movie, of course, was Phillip Borsos‘ The Grey Fox (’82). It starred Richard Farnsworth (61 during filming) as real-life bank robber Bill Miner. The tone of that film was established by Miner’s kindness and gentility, and that seems to be the idea with Lowery’s film also.

On 11.11.16 several publications quoted Robert Redford saying that he’ll probably hang up his acting spurs after making David Lowery‘s The Old Man and the Gun (Fox Searchlight, 9.28).

Less than two hours after those stories hit Redford’s publicist, Cindy Berger of PMK*BNC, told Deadline that any and all notions of retirements were bogus. “[Redford] is certainly not retiring now from acting because he has several projects coming down the pike,” she said.

Read more

See me, feel me, protect me, touch me, marry me, have kids with me…shed a bumblebee tear.

Remember when it was first announced that Hailee Steinfeld had passed on Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York to star in Travis Knight‘s Bumblebee (Paramount, 12.21)? At the time that seemed like a shallow and opportunistic way to process things, but now it looks like she dodged a bullet, especially given the obstinate determinations of guys like Sam Adams.

Last night I asked HE’s own Mark Frenden to assemble new HE:(plus) banner art. I said I wanted to use a sliver of a revised American Friend poster that Frenden created three or four years ago, in which I substituted for Dennis Hopper. I think it came out pretty well. Still a fair amount of tweaking left to do on HE:(plus), but it’s on track to launch sometime around 6.20 or thereabouts.

There’s a new Olive Films Bluray of Robert Wise‘s Odds Against Tomorrow (’59). The only thing that distinguishes it from the 2016 BFI Bluray version, according to DVD Beaver‘s Gary. W. Tooze, is the 1.85 aspect ratio — a brutal cleavering of the BFI’s 1.37 version.

Tooze is such a toad about aspect ratios. In his review of the BFI Bluray he actually cheered the possibility of a 1.85 cleavering — “The dispute rages on about the aspect ratio…one day a 1.85:1 will surface!”

For what it’s worth an AFI.com assessment noted that Odds Against Tomorrow “marked the last time Wise shot in black-and-white within the standard aspect ratio — a formula which gave his films the gritty realism they were known for.”

1.85 cleavering, an approach vigorously argued and lobbied for a decade ago by Film Archive’s Bob Furmanek, is perhaps the worst thing to happen in the realm of home-video remasterings of ’50s and early ’60s films. If you doubt this, watch Criteron’s On The Waterfront aspect-ratio essay after the jump.

The “boxy” 2.16 BFI Bluray version above; Olive Films’ 1.85 version below.

Read more

Anyone who’s read Moses Farrow’s 5.23 essay about Dylan Farrow’s child molestation charges against her adoptive father Woody Allen as well as Robert Weide‘s “Q & A with Dylan Farrow” (12.13.17) and still insists that Allen’s guilt is absolute and unmitigated is just a bigot at this stage.

“Believe the alleged victim” and ignore everything else — the facts, the evidence, the presumably well-known fact that child molesters always repeat their crime. This is what Sam Adams, the The Playlist, Movie City News and their ilk are right now — high-denial Allen bigots, plain and simple.

Movie City News link, posted on 6.4.18.

This feels like a frenzied, Detroit-flavored version of At Close Range — i.e., young teenage criminal (Richard Wershe, Jr.) rats out ruthless, drug-dealing dad (Matthew McConaughey). Directed by Yann Demange, White Boy Rick was written by Steve Kloves, Logan Miller, Noah Miller, and Andy Weiss. Costarring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bruce Dern, Bel Powley, Piper Laurie.

Pic was initially slated to open on 1.12.18, was pushed back two weeks to 1.26.18, then again to 8.7.18, then again to 9.4.18. Do I hear a fifth release date?

In my February 2014 review of Demange’s ’71, a Belfast-set action melodrama set during “the troubles”, I noted that the emphasis was on “menace and fear and thrills and adrenaline…exceptional verisimilitude and throttling realism…in some ways reminiscent of Paul Greengrass‘s Bloody Sunday, this is a jolt-cola movie.”

I’ll just hop into my Pontiac Firebird, gas up, bat outta hell. But why would I want to lam it when I’m pure as the driven snow? Either way I’m too fast for the cops. And if they do catch me I’ll just pardon myself.

“I bought a brand-new air-mobile / It custom-made, ’twas a Flight De Ville / With a pow’ful motor and some hideaway wings / Push in on the button and you can hear her sing / Now you can’t catch me…whoa, baby, you can’t catch me…’cause if you get too close, you know I’m gone like a cool breeze.”

Senator John McCain: “I like presidents who don’t need pardons, much less those who fantasize about giving themselves one.”

Read more

The great Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave, Shame) appears to have taken an Ocean’s 8-resembling genre premise — wives of four dead felons pooling forces to complete a major robbery — and invested it with brute foreboding. Escapism eschewed in favor of Trump-era political current and commentary. Corrupt Chicago authority types vs. resourceful women of varying shades. Obviously a brew of toughness and steel, especially on the part of Viola Davis. A guy who’s seen Widows calls her “the standout, a force of nature in a showcase role…her son was murdered by police after they pulled him out of a car.” Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo. Costarring Colin Farrell (baddie), Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Jacki Weaver, Robert Duvall, Liam Neeson.