True story: A director who’s been in the trenches for many years recently heard from a woman who worked as his assistant back in ’87. They hadn’t crossed paths in eons but suddenly an email arrived, and it was tersely worded: “I have something I need to talk to you about.” Right away he felt the fear. The director has always been a kindly gentleman sort, but things were different 30 years ago. He began to scratch his memory and ask himself, “Was there ever a moment in which I might have crossed some kind of line with this woman?” Please, God…tell me nothing even slightly improper occurred as I love my life and I don’t want to die. A current of anxiety began to creep into his bloodstream. Anyway, he reached out and the former assistant rang or something, and it turned out that she’d written a script that she wanted him to read. Whew.

Posted on 1.24.17: As Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name is largely spoken in English and particularly given what a flat-out masterpiece it is, I don’t see why this sensual Italian-shot drama shouldn’t be a Best Picture contender a year from now.” And look what happened!

This is a landmark film that deserves its day in the Oscar sun. For Call Me By Your Name is not so much about a one-on-one relationship (although that is certainly a central thread) as much as the hearts and minds of a small, mostly English-speaking community in northern Italy (the film was primarily shot in Guadagnino’s home town of Crema), and how they all observe, absorb, nourish and comment upon in little affecting ways the central, slow-build love story between Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer.

What counts is that the mood and drift of this film isn’t really about straight or gay or anything in between. It’s about “being there” in every possible comprehension of that term — about sensual samplings, summer aromas, warm sunshine, fresh water and that swoony, lifty feeling, etc. You’ve read this stuff over and over, but after a ten-month wait CMNBYN (98% Rotten Tomatoes, 95% Metacritic) is finally starting to appear on commercial screens.

On 11.16 Variety mentioned a pull quote from this excerpt from Sarah Silverman‘s “I Love You, America” — “I love Louis, but he did these things.” But I didn’t listen to the whole thing until this morning. Silverman knows. I Love You, America, a talk show, premiered on Hulu on 10.12.17.

There are several keeper scenes in Alexander Payne‘s Sideways, but this is the best, I feel, because it really sinks into classic manboy immaturity and a messy emotional collapse.

At first, right after Thomas Haden Church‘s “Jack” tells Paul Giamatti‘s “Miles” that “they” have to return to the home of the plus-sized waitress (Missy Doty) to retrieve his wallet and more particularly the wedding rings, Giamatti is going “naah” and shaking his head and waving it off. But then Church’s pleading and wailing becomes more desperate and adolescent, and at 2:30 Giamatti’s expression suddenly shifts from one of sadness and resignation to astonished pity and compassion.

This is great, world-class, pool-of-human-experience acting, and the great Giamatti wasn’t even Best Actor-nominated that year. The ’04 nominees in this category were Jamie Foxx in Ray (the winner), Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda, Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland (c’mon!), Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator and Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby.

I remember agonizing over the Giamatti snub, and deducing soon after that he didn’t get nominated because of that first-act scene in which Miles helps himself to some cash out of his mother’s bureau drawer. I actually shared this suspicion with Giamatti at Olio y Limone during the ’05 Santa Barbara Film Festival. I did so out of compassion and a keen resentment of life’s unfairness. He apparently hadn’t considered the stealing-from-mom angle, as it seemed to hit him for the first time: “Damn! Damn!”

I wrote yesterday that while some have called Darkest Hour‘s London Underground scene “ridiculous,” in nonetheless works. I called it the most emotionally satisfying scene in the whole film, and the only one that made me sit up in my seat and go “this is probably bullshit from a historical perspective, but it’s connecting.”

Last night Chris Willman wrote in the comment thread that the Underground scene is “horrible…HORRIBLE. Any good will I had for the movie, and it was wavering, evaporated at that point. I don’t understand how it works or connects for anybody. No science fiction or fantasy movie has ever required such a suspension of disbelief from an audience.”

My response, tapped out this morning: “It’s a kind of fantasy sequence but it works all the same. It’s theatrically hokey and perhaps even simple-minded, but it’s (a) shrewdly timed, arriving just before Churchill’s grand climax inside Parliament, and (b) more importantly delivers what we want to hear after listening to cagey, measured expressions of political calculation for 90 or 100 minutes beforehand. It’s a pure-heart, resolve-of-the-people moment (“Never!”). It feels, yes, like a dream sequence, almost in the manner of a Rodgers & Hammerstein interlude. But emphatic emotion is what Darkest Hour needs at this third-act juncture, and as much as you may dislike the calculation, it pays off.”

Dunkirk, The Shape of Water, The Post and Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri continue to enjoy the Gold Derby and Gurus of Gold heat; ditto Darkest Hour to a slightly lesser extent. If you ask me the four hottest Best Picture contenders are Dunkirk, The Post, Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird. Just how things seem at this stage.

Hollywood Elsewhere has just signed Tom Steyer‘s impeach Trump petition at needtoimpeach.com. The tally is now at 2,809,000 — will probably hit 3 million by tomorrow or the next day. And Steyer now has a Times Square electronic billboard alerting passersby to the petition. What are you waiting for?

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In the view of N.Y. Times critic Glenn Kenny, Lili Fini Zanuck‘s Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars “comes up short” as a musical biography, but “plays substantially better as a story of recovery and recovered integrity.” I wouldn’t know as I bailed on this 135-minute documentary sometime around…oh, the 35-minute mark. I departed over issues with the technical quality of what I’d seen up to that point. I tried to explain my complaints on 9.11.17, in a post from the Toronto Film Festival:

Zanuck’s doc opens today (11.24), and will air on Showtime starting on 2.10.18.

“Lili Fini Zanuck‘s Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars illustrates a rule about documentaries and particularly talking-head footage that bears repeating,” my review began.

“If you have an ample supply of alluring, great-looking, non-grainy footage, you’re free to forego talking heads. Just hire a top-tier editor, overlay some wise, insightful narration and you’ll probably be fine. But if your footage is mainly composed of grainy, shitty-looking photos mixed with black-and-white TV footage, you definitely need to intercut with well-recorded, high-def color footage of this and that knowledgable, insightful authority.

“The reason, obviously, is that you’ll want to occasionally free the viewer from the prison of fuzzy, shitty-looking stills and black-and-white TV footage, and you’ll also want to heighten the impact of your vocal observations as a way of adding intellectual intrigue and fighting the general monotony.

Eric Clapton, 72, during Sunday’s visit to the Toronto Film Festival to promote Lili Fini Zanuck’s Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars.

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Steven Spielberg‘s The Post (20th Century Fox, 12.22) screened in Manhattan last weekend at Loews’ Lincoln Square. Mark Harris moderated a post-screening discussion between Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, supporting performance standout Bob Odenkirk and Matthew Rhys (who plays Daniel Ellsberg). A similar gathering will take place on Monday evening, 11.27, at the DGA and also on the 20th Century Fox lot. The Twitter embargo lifts that night at 9 pm. I for one am tapping out thoughts and preparing drafts in advance so I can post right at the stroke. By the way: I’m leaving 90 minutes from now to catch the first-in.L.A. press screening of Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Phantom Thread.

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With Forbes‘ Rob Cain having reported on 11.20 that Justice League will likely suffer a loss between $50 and $100 million, it’s safe to call this latest DC Extended Universe flick a dead monkey. Pic cost $300 million to make and $150 million to sell, meaning that the Zack Snyder-Joss Wheedon enterprise needs $750 million just to balance the books.

Right now the worldwide tally, seven days after opening on 11.17, is $315,816,643. With the bloom off the rose and returns dropping from here on, pic will have to double its current worldwide haul to reach $630 million, which would be $120 million shy of the break-even mark.

Now that the film has flopped and the game is over, what did the HE community think of Justice League?

Forgive me for not participating, but I don’t “do” movies like Justice League or the general DC realm for that matter. Until, that is, Matt Reeves‘ The Batman comes along.