In a deleted, apologized-for tweet, Rose McGowan recently attacked Meryl Streep for allegedly knowing about Harvey Weinstein’s criminal assaults but saying nothing: “Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster, are wearing black @goldenglobes in a silent protest. YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa.”

And now a street artist, ignorant of or indifferent to McGowan’s apology, is pushing the “Streep knew” narrative. Every revolutionary political movement has its radical purists and Robespierres, and history never forgets them; the #MeToo movement is no different.

Yesterday Streep released a statement about the McGowan charge. Here’s part of it:

“It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the 90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others.

“I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know. I don’t tacitly approve of rape. I didn’t know. I don’t like young women being assaulted. I didn’t know this was happening.

“Rose assumed and broadcast something untrue about me, and I wanted to let her know the truth. Through friends who know her, I got my home phone number to her the minute I read the headlines. I sat by that phone all day yesterday and this morning, hoping to express both my deep respect for her and others’ bravery in exposing the monsters among us, and my sympathy for the untold, ongoing pain she suffers. No one can bring back what entitled bosses like Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes and HW took from the women who endured attacks on their bodies and their ability to make a living.. And I hoped that she would give me a hearing. She did not, but I hope she reads this.

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Imagine if Gary Ross‘s Ocean’s 8 (Warner Bros., 6.8.18) was made like a modern-day Rififi. If eight shrewd women got together and successfully pulled off a big heist, but then one of them rats another out to the cops. Or a rival crew finds out about the job and kidnaps the child of Sarah Paulson, and so Paulson, Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett hunt down the kidnappers except Bullock gets shot in the stomach. Or after flashing too much money around Helena Bonham Carter gets busted by detectives and pressured to reveal who else pulled off the job, and Mindy Kaling panics and realizes HBC has to die or she’ll spill the beans on everyone. I would love an escapist film like that, one that promises the usual bullshit but then turns around and gets real. But of course, no one would be allowed to make a Rififi about ruthless women thieves as this would go against the narrative.

Incidentally: The MovieBox copy that accompanies this new trailer starts with the words “to steal a priceless neckless…”

I saw Ridley Scott‘s All The Money in the World (Sony, 12.25) for the second time last night at a big Academy premiere — talent, producers, actors, publicists, below-the-liners, people like me, etc. Scott and some of the cast attended (Mark Wahlberg, Christoper Plummer, Michelle Williams, Charlie Plummer, Timothy Hutton), and there was a big party afterward with loads of great-tasting food by Wolfgang Puck caterers.

All The Money is about a true-life event — the 1973 Rome kidnapping of John Paul Getty III and the laborious, months-long negotiations between the kidnappers and the young Getty’s tightwad grandfather, oil baron and billionaire J. Paul Getty, that followed. Scott doesn’t fool around with the story beats, and has made a stylish, well-finessed thing, jarring and intelligent and always believable.

Prior to last night’s Academy screening of Ridley Scott’s All The Money In The World — Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Williams, Scott.

The film is actually about tycoon vs. people values — a rumination about the real price of meat in the market, about how cold things can get when a capitalist emperor like Getty Sr. (chillingly played by Plummer) has been told to cough up or else when it comes to life of one of his own (Charlie Plummer, no relation), and how thorny and malignant life can be when hard bargainers are sparring over the size of a ransom. It’s a film about icy, eyeball-to-eyeball behavior on all sides.

Except, that is, when it comes to Gail Harris (Williams), the mother of the kidnapped scion who, as you might expect, doesn’t see the situation in monetary as much as human terms. And also, come to think of it, when it comes to Cinquanta (Romain Duris), a member of the Red Brigade kidnapping gang who becomes the young Getty’s closest captor and “friend”, in a manner of speaking. At the end of the day Cinqunata is almost as much on the human side as Gail.

In the Scott canon, All The Money in the World isn’t as cruel and ruthless as The Counselor, the 2013 drug-dealing drama that is arguably Scott’s finest 21st Century film, but it operates in the same chilly ballpark. Scott isn’t commonly associated with straight-talking dramas about upfront realism, but when he decides to settle down and make films for adults (i.e., stories about how things really are out there), there’s no one better.

We’ve all been impressed, I think, by Scott’s recent herculean re-filming of all the J. Paul Getty scenes (re-performed by Plummer when it became apparent in early November that the disgraced Kevin Spacey had to be jettisoned) between 11.20 and 11.30. Scott was given a longish standing ovation when he took the stage before the show began.

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It’s been nearly 11 months since I first saw Call Me By Your Name at Sundance ’17. Like everyone else, I was floored by that quietly climactic father-son scene between Michael Stuhlbarg and Timothee Chalamet. Even before it ended I was dead certain that Stuhlbarg would become one of the five contenders for Best Supporting Actor Oscar, and perhaps even the likeliest winner.

But then, of course, The Florida Project premiered in Cannes four months later and then Willem Dafoe began to happen in the early fall, and now there’s not even an element of doubt about his winning, despite strong competition from Sam Rockwell‘s performance in Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. Stuhlbarg’s performance, jewel-perfect as it is, never lifted off the award-season runway. The unfairness of life amazes me, and it never stops.

From Brett Easton Ellis’s 12.18 Out piece: “In terms of plot nothing much happens on the surface of Call Me By Your Name, but of course something monumental is happening because what we are witnessing is the erasure of innocence — this affair will kill that. On a second viewing the gay vibe** from Elio’s father (Stuhlbarg) is clearer, and in a very moving scene near the end he gives a speech to Elio (Chalamet), devastated over the loss of Oliver and flooded with the pangs of first love’s disappointments.

“The speech is culled from the book where the father tells his son that he knew what was happening between him and Oliver and that he has nothing to be ashamed of and to cherish the pain he’s feeling and that he’ll always be there for him. This scene could have been nearly insufferable in its noble ‘progressive’ virtue-signaling: if only we all had fathers this wonderful and warm-hearted and accommodating, who can console their sons with lines like ‘When you least expect it nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot,’ and ‘Remember, I’m here.’

“And yet Stuhlberg sells it with a hushed technical virtuosity that makes every word land and vibrate, even though at times he overdoes the saintly Jewish-Daddy thing. Stuhlberg makes this the real climax of the movie — it becomes a primal scene — and in the packed theater I saw the movie you could hear the gay men (at least half the audience) barely holding back muffled sobs.

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The initially dispiriting thing about Wes Anderson‘s Isle of Dogs (Fox Searchlight, 3.23) is that (a) it’s set in Japan, which Hollywood Elsewhere has never been a huge fan of, (b) it’s about a dystopian future and (c) it’s largely set on “trash island,” which seems to be all about grayish colors, rotting food and industrial waste. Which of course makes you feel sorry for the poor dogs who live there. One presumes (hopes) that the third-act involves some kind of escape and/or transformation.

Wiki boilerpplate: “Set in a dystopian future Japan in which dogs have been quarantined on the remote eponymous island due to a “canine flu”, Isle of Dogs follows five barkers — Chief (Bryan Cranston), Rex (Edward Norton), Boss (Bill Murray), Duke (Jeff Goldblum) and King (Bob Balaban). They’re fed up with their isolated existence until a boy named Atari Kobayashi (Koyu Rankin) ventures to the island to search for his dog, Spots (Liev Schreiber),” etc.

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Neil Blomkamp‘s District 9 meets George Miller‘s The Road Warrior meets current epic sensibilities. Pure apocalyptic formula, and called Mortal Engines, you bet. “Thousands of years after civilization was destroyed by a cataclysmic event,” blah blah, same old same old. Wells to filmmakers: Huge tractor cities don’t growl like dinosaurs — they don’t go “rrrhhoowwwhhrrr.” Directed by Christian Rivers, produced by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, written by Jackson, Walsh and Philippa Boyens. Costarring Robert Sheehan, Hera Hilmar, Leila George, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Lang. Universal will open it on 12.14.18.

I wouldn’t call President Trump’s statement about not planning to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller…I wouldn’t call that comforting because you know he wants to. He just doesn’t think he can fire Mueller without making things worse for himself. If Trump were otherwise persuaded he’d go for it. He’s unhappy about Mueller for gaining access to all transition those emails. “My people were very upset about it,” he said — right. Mueller’s spokesman claimed that the email-obtaining methods were totally legit.

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Tatyana and I were waiting in line on the Disney Burbank lot for last Monday’s 7 pm show of The Last Jedi. Waiting and waiting. 6:25 pm, 6:30 pm, 6:35 pm…what’s going on? Suddenly the 4 pm show broke around 6:42 pm, and I knew there wasn’t a chance that they’d start again at 7 pm.

I happened to mention to Tatyana that Jedi lasts around 150 minutes, and a minute later she decided she didn’t want to stay. We agreed that she’d meet me outside the main Alameda gate around 9:45 pm. But we’d have to stick to this plan come hell or high water as we’d left our phones in the car in the parking garage, per Disney orders.

Sure enough they started the film late; it ended around 9:42 pm. I sped-marched out of the main theatre and up to the main gate. I knew the metal gates would be locked but presumed they’d have those special one-way doors that allow people to leave but not enter. Nope. Then I figured “okay, I’m agile, I’ll hop the fence” but I soon realized that was easier said than done.

It was now 9:47 pm but I didn’t see Tatyana. I walked down to the Buena Vista gate — same deal, no exit. The place is a fortress! I started to feel a little creeped out by those damn Mickey Mouse heads atop the green metal fence. Mouse heads…mouse heads everywhere.

Then I walked down to the Riverside Drive gate…another locked gate. You’re staying the night! I walked across Riverside on an elevated pedestrian bridge and down behind an animation building, and finally I came upon a driveway gate with access to the street. Disney security doesn’t fool around.

Two minutes later Tatyana showed up at the corner of Riverside and Buena Vista. She’d driven around the lot three times and was about to start on the fourth.

Obviously Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a huge hit. Sometime tonight domestic earnings are expected to hit $220,047,000 plus $230 million foreign for a worldwide haul of $450,047,000, and that’s after three days in theatres.

Obviously everyone wanted to see it this weekend, but what about those shitty “user” (i.e., ticket-buyer) ratings on Rotten Tomatoes (56% with 97,121 respondents) and Metacritic (4.9% out of 10)?

Metacritic user score for The Last Jedi as of Sunday noon.

Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro has asked around and is reporting that while “user scores typically aren’t that far from their critical ratings,” the reason for the huge gap between critical upvotes for Jedi and negative responses from ticket buyers is due to malicious “trolling.” Additionally, he says, “there’s no way to filter on these sites whether or not the users have actually seen Last Jedi or not.”

This is why D’Alessandro trusts CinemaScore and PostTrak much more, as they “literally poll moviegoers in real time, as they’re exiting the theater.”

And yet no other films on the current Rotten Tomatoes roster are showing this kind of discrepancy — a 93% critical rating for Jedi vs. 56% user ratings from 96,829 respondents.

Ferdinand has a 73% rating and a 75% user rating. Justice League, generally regarded as a box-office underperformer, is at $40% (critics) and 79% (some very friendly users). Wonder is at 85% (critics) and 91% (users). The Disaster Artist is at 99% and 90%. Coco is at 97% and 96%.

In short, the only film beside Jedi with a serious critic-user discrepancy is Justice League, but in that case the film was much better liked by users than critics. In all other cases user and critic ratings are fairly close.

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