Don’t apologize, Anderson — own it. Your inner Bill Maher came out. Be proud.

The opening of Lina Wertmuller‘s Seven Beauties (’76) is an “oh, yeah” classic, but many have forgotten that it’s not really a main-title sequence. The title is announced but otherwise it’s just a mission-statement thing, a declaration that the film won’t be playing it straight, that satire will be used, etc. What other films have begun with impressionistic tonal mood-setters (music, montage) that seem to be main-title sequences but aren’t?

Those mp3s from Loveless co-composer Evgueni Galperine arrived early Friday evening. Track #1 provides an idea of the portion that was inspired by the sound of spinning bicycle tires. Track #2 (“Trevoga”) and track #3 (snowstorm).

Yesterday was a four-film marathon with barely a moment to breathe or assess. Okay, I had three-plus hours after seeing Bong Joon-ho‘s dreadful, cliche-ridden, Spielbergian Okja, which I knew would be splashy, showoffy kid-mulch going in, at 8:30 am, and then Jonas Carpignano‘s A Ciambra, a good-as-it-went, respectably compelling sequel to Mediterranea about a young teenaged thief (Pio Amato) coping with character and loyalty issues in a hardscrabble town in Southern Italy. But I couldn’t get down to it.

I wanted to at least tap something out about A Ciambra, which I saw at the subterranean Director’s Fortnight venue under the JW Marriott, but I couldn’t squeeze anything out. Guilt doesn’t get you there — writing does. I ate and napped and piddled around. In the late afternoon I posted three or four riffs about other subjects, but before I knew it I had to attend a 7 pm screening of Ruben Ostlund‘s The Square, followed almost immediately by Kaouther Ben Hania‘s Beauty and the Dogs at 10:15 pm.

(l. to r.) Beauty and the Dogs director Kaouther Ben Hania, costars Ghanem Zrelli and Mariam Al Ferjani.

Ape-channeller Terry Notary (who has only a single scene — the star is Claes Bang) in Ruben Ostlund’s The Square.

In other words, yesterday really meant something because of a low-key, near-great, at times hilarious social comedy (Preston Sturges on Percocet?) followed by a harrowing recreation of a nocturnal post-rape trauma that happened in Tunisia in 2012, assembled with a series of eight or nine long takes and pushed through with a brilliant lead performance.

The finest of the lot was The Square, a longish (142 mins.) 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.

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.

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.

I didn’t like Bong Joon-ho‘s Big Fat Lovable Pig Who Never Farts (i.e., Okja), but I was too lazy to write about it earlier. Goes that way sometimes — you think about writing something and even prepare with notes, but you somehow can’t make yourself do it. Now it’s 6:30 pm and I have to catch a 7pm showing Ruben Ostlund‘s The Square, followed by a 10:15 pm screening of Kaother Ben Hania‘s Beauty And The Dogs, which got some good buzz earlier today.

I keep getting these notions by way of insect antennae vibrations that Alex Kurtzman and Tom Cruise‘s The Mummy (Universal, 6.4) is probably going to underperform and may even become the next King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. It feels shallow and obvious, and has certainly been over-trailered. I’m not saying it’ll flop, but that it won’t do what Universal marketing is hoping for, and may even fall short of that mark. It feels amusing and energetic, yes, but I don’t like Sofia Boutella‘s Egyptian princess mummy — she’s too little, too CG-augmented and not scary.

54 years ago on The Steve Allen Show, Frank Zappa played the bicycle. The future Mothers of Invention leader didn’t exactly create “music” but there was a certain emotionality to some of the sounds. I’m mentioning this because last night Evgueni Galperine, co-composer of the score to Andrey Zvaginstev‘s Loveless, told me he used a spinning bicycle wheel for two or three muscial passages in the film. Like the 1963 Zappa effect, it’s an eerie, whining sound that isn’t exactly melodious but is definitely affecting. Evgueni and brother Sacha, both of whom live in Paris these days, also composed the music for The Hunger Games as well as Barry Levinson‘s The Wizard of Lies. Evgueni, with whom I spoke during last night’s Loveless party, promised to send me a couple of mp3 clips from the Loveless score, including the bicycle one.

Loveless composer and musical bicycle aficionado Evguieni Galperine

Yesterday morning (5.19) at 9:27 am, I received an invite to a Hotel Martinez discussion between Michael Moore (beamed in via Skype) and Harvey and Bob Weinstein about Fahrenheit 11/9, Moore’s forthcoming doc about the Donald Trump catastrophe. Six hours and 25 minutes later (or at 3:44 pm) I received an email from a Weinstein rep saying that “the conversation on Friday with Harvey, Bob, and Michael will no longer be an open event for coverage.” Meaning what exactly? The discussion will happen, I was told, but only for buyers, not press. Not a huge concern on this end but switching gears with the space of six hours feels a bit skittish on Harvey or Michael’s part. Antsy, insecure.

It would appear that Harvey or Michael had second thoughts about the tone of the potential press coverage. Perhaps a 5.16 HE post titled “Can Michael Moore Go Home Again?” gave them the willies. Opening paragraph: “I somehow doubt that Michael Moore‘s forthcoming anti-Trump doc, Fahrenheit 11/9, will shake up or double-clarify perceptions of the deranged Trump circus. I say this as a staunch fan and ally of nearly every Moore viewpoint and documentary going back to Roger and Me, but what can he say or show that isn’t on the web and cable news every day?”

This poster broke two or three days ago. It went right by me until a friend asked “whaddaya think?” What I think is that until today I hadn’t imagined how nuts Darren Aronofsky‘s mother! (Paramount, 10,13) might be. Obviously a good thing. Directed and written by Aronofsky; costarring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Ed Harris and Kristen Wiig.

Late this afternoon I submitted to Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Carne y Arena, a six-and-a-half-minute virtual reality trip that simulates with all-encompassing realism what Mexican immigrants often go through while attempting to cross the United States border in the Southwestern desert region. It was my first virtual-reality-plus experience (not just sight and sound but a realistic vibe and an atmosphere that I was walking around in barefoot), and I was so knocked out I’m returning next week for a second go-round.

I took off my shoes and socks, strolled into a red-lighted sound stage with a floor covered in sand, put on a virtual reality backpack and headset and…bing, there I was. Or there it all was. The headset screen was circular and not CinemaScope-like as I’d expected, but I was suddenly standing in the pre-dawn desert amid the sloping mounds and cactus and slightly damp morning air. Then a small group of immigrants, led by a “coyote”, approached in the semi-darkness.

A few seconds later an overhead chopper approached, and then a blinding light hit my eyes. Border guards pulled up in a pair of SUVs, shouting and aiming their weapons and telling me to get the fuck down on my knees. I put my hands up and dropped to the ground, looking around and behind and all over. Then I got back up and started roaming around in a crouched combat position, feeling like Charlie Sheen or Willem Dafoe in Platoon. Then I got yelled at again: “Down on your knees…hit the ground…now!”

In short, within seconds I had forgotten the tech aspects and fallen into the reality of it. It wasn’t a viewing experience — it was a being experience. You can do a 360 any time to see what’s happening here or there. There were dozens of things I could have done including (I assume) challenge the guards and tell them to back off or say “yo…my personal hotspot isn’t working…do you know where I can find a reasonably decent wifi signal?” Mostly I crouched and watched and just took it all in. I was half-expecting to get shot at any moment. Which would have actually been cool, especially if the VR assistant had punched me in the chest at the exact moment the muzzle flash appeared.

Carne y Arena is an all-CG creation but sourced from actual footage with real actors. It was easily the most immersive, head-turning viewing I’ve ever sampled, tasted, felt and touched. And yet it also delivered in emotional terms, prompting me to feel compassion for immigrants all over. So yes, I now know a little bit about what it’s like to go through something like this for real. I felt intimidated, fearful. But I have to say that I simply loved the primal juice of it. I especially liked walking around that big desert sandbox barefoot.

Carne y Arena director Alejandro G. Inarritu, inside viewing hangar at the Cannes Mandelieu Airport — Thursday, 5.19, 3:35 pm.