A friend who saw Rogue One at the Pantages two nights ago calls it “the best Star Wars film I’ve ever seen.” I asked what his favorite Star Wars film is, and he answered The Empire Strikes Back. Me: “You’re saying it strikes the same kind of heavy chords?” Friend: “Well, it’s not as darkly themed or artily photographed but it’s really good…they had to start from scratch with brand-new characters.”

I could have gone into my song-and-dance about Empire being such a one-of-a-kind thing, but I didn’t want to be tedious. But I doubt that Rogue One is going to be all about losing, betrayals, self-doubt, hauntings and evil having its way, which is what consumes Irvin Kershner‘s 1980 film. (And which is precisely what’s happening in this country right now.) They’re no glory in Empire. The heroes get their asses kicked from beginning to end, and at the end they’re grateful not to be dead and ready for a nap. Like most of us these days.

An out-of-town critic who saw it this morning said the following: “I’m not much of a Star Wars fan, but this one struck me as easily one of the best in the series. It goes on too long — 133 minutes — with one of those endless battle sequences at its climax, but the story is pretty interesting, there is actually some moral complexity, and it appears the franchise has finally entered the 21st century in terms of casting. The heroes are a Mexican, an English woman, two Asians and a Pakistani/Muslim/Englishman. So the film’s racial and ethnic composition is kind of a ‘fuck you’ to Trump and the alt-right.”

I’m seeing Rogue One this evening at 7 pm on the Disney lot.

For the 17th time: The fact that I adore grimly serious fast-car movies means that I have no choice but to loathe the Fast and Furious franchise, and to condemn F. Gary Gray‘s The Fate of the Furious (Universal, 4.4.17) sight unseen. Because this franchise has steadfastly refused to invest in any semblance of road reality, and has thereby locked me out of the action time and again.

Because I really love that low-key Steve McQueen machismo thing. I worshipped the driving sequences in Nicholas Winding Refn‘s Drive. Those screeching, howling tires and clouds of smelly white smoke in their wake. The kind we can really believe in. Hey, guys? McQueen is looking down from heaven, and he thinks you’re all pathetic. Particularly Diesel and Johnson.

Last night I watched the last three episodes of HBO’s Divorce, which I’ve liked enough to stay with but not enough to write about. But here I am writing about the music played over the closing credits of episode #10 — the Little River Band‘s “Lonesome Loser.” This was never more than a second-tier song (the lyrics are kind of awful in a self-pitying way) but it got me nonetheless. Because the chorus has a nice hooky harmony thing, and because it’s been 30-plus years since I’ve had a listen. All to say there are some songs out there that you know aren’t very good but you listen to them anyway, especially when you’re driving. I have a place in my head for songs like this, and I’m sorry.

Click here to jump past HE Sink-In

It’s immediately apparent that Martin Scorsese‘s Silence has a grand scheme in mind, and that the task of the viewer to drop to his or her knees and settle into it like a great novel or an extended church service. Immersive, enveloping. A kind of spiritual obstacle course, and transfixing for that. And yet you’re waiting for some shift in the wind, a turning of a page. But what? Will Silence hear thunder from the sky or be shaken by an earthquake or clapped with a bolt of lightning?

Silence costar Issey Ogata.

No, it turns out — somewhere around the 110-minute mark Silence will suddenly be lifted and cue-balled and spun around by a guy I’ve never heard of but whose energy is obvious and exceptional — Issey Ogata, a 64 year-old Japanese actor giving a “where did this come from?” supporting performance that makes you sit up in your seat and go “yes…he’s kicking it…give it to me!”

Ogata is playing a bad guy (i.e., Inoue Masashige, a real-life figure in the Japanese persecution of Christians) but with relish and pizazz. He gives Andrew Garfield‘s Sebastiao Rodrigues hell wth a forked tongue. His every line says “I love debating cowering Christians and explaining with supreme confidence how completely meaningless they are in 17th Century Japan…and I love swatting flies and twitching my eyebrows and flaunting my quirkiness.”

In short, Ogata is a kind of Hans Landa in Japanese garb.

The Academy loves scenery-chewers. Who doesn’t?

Today a well-sourced, nicely written piece about Don’s Plum (’96), the long-suppressed, improvisational hang-out film that costars Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Kevin Connolly, appeared on Vanity Fair.com.

Written by Chris Lee, it covers the long, soul-draining saga of what began as a short film made by a group of bros in ’95 and ’96, but expanded into a feature-length thing when director R.D. Robb and producer Dale Wheatley sensed during editing that they’d shot something crazier and more complex than what a short could contain.

The problem was that DiCaprio and Maguire didn’t want Don’s Plum released as a feature, partly because they didn’t find their loose-shoe performances flattering and partly because it was never supposed to be more than a short. They eventually took measures to have the feature-length verson killed as far as U.S. and Canadian distribution was concerned.

The film finished shooting 20 years ago and you still can’t see it domestically, although you can buy the German Region 2 DVD.

I wrote 5,000 words about Don’s Plum in ‘late 97 for Mr. Showbiz, only the piece has been deleted and presumably trashed. (I might have a color print-out stuffed in my closet.) I contributed some of this story to a People magazine article about DiCaprio than ran in January ’98.

The backstory boils down to this: Robb, Wheatley and producers David Stutman and John Schindler should have gone along with requests from DiCaprio and Maguire to make a short instead of a feature, and used it as a calling-card thing. But they decided to be ambitious instead, and paid the price for that. DiCaprio and Maguire felt betrayed and eventually went to court to stop the film (which I’ve seen a couple of times in a muddy, dupey VHS form) from being released, and succeeded.

I didn’t crash until 2 am last night so I damn sure wasn’t going to bound out of bed at dawn for the Golden Globe nominations. No way. There are plenty of sites posting the nommies chapter and verse so I’ll just mention a few eyebrow raisers:

(1) No Best Motion Picture, Drama for Fences, and no Best Director nomination for Denzel Washington — Oddly, unjustly, the “Fences isn’t cinematic enough” observation has stuck to the wall as far as the HFPA is concerned. Hollywood Elsewhere’s view is that Fences, a straight-sauce delivery of August Wilson‘s finest play, has the confidence to not flourish things up with ambitious camera strategies. It just watches without comment, letting Wilson’s dialogue (along with the perfect performances) carry the ball. That’s integrity, son.

(2) No Best Supporting Actor nomination for Hidden Figures‘ Kevin Costner — I’ve noted more than once that Costner is one of those world-class movie stars who’s mastered the fine art (as once explained by James Cagney) of planting your feet, looking people in the eye and telling the truth. This steady, balanced, fair-minded vibe fortifies his Hidden Figures character, NASA honcho Al Harrison (a composite character partly based on the late Robert Gilruth), and the film as a whole.

(3) Total blowoff of Martin Scorsese’s Silence — Even among those who’ve expressed this or that concern about Scorsese’s 17th Century spiritual epic, no one is disputing that Silence is a deeply personal, fully-realized masterwork of sorts — not the easiest film to sit through perhaps but one that indisputably pays off at the end, and which sticks to your ribs for days following. It doesn’t seem right or respectful to just wave this film off like a side order of asparagus. No nominations at all.

(4) No Michael Keaton nomination for his fascinating, ethically ambiguous, neither fish-nor-fowl performance as McDonald’s kingpin Ray Kroc in The Founder — As I wrote on 12.2, “Most people like their moral-ethical dramas to adhere to a black and white scheme, and The Founder boldly refuses to do this. It treads a fine ethical edge, allowing you to root for Keaton’s ‘bad guy’ despite reservations while allowing you to conclude that the McDonald brothers were stoppers who didn’t get it.” Keaton’s brilliant performance never instructs you how to feel or what judgments to arrive at, and therein lies the genius.

(5) No nomination for Gold‘s Matthew McConaughey — I haven’t posted any opinions about Gold (Dimension 12.25), but I’m not in the least bit surprised that Matthew McConaughey‘s performance as ‘Kenny Wells’ (a gold-prospecting character based on the real-life John Felderhof, who figured prominently in the Bre-X financial scandal of the ’90s) is being bypassed for awards action. For McConaughey’s performance is the most annoyingly actorish he’s ever given, crammed with makeup and affectations — a bulky weight gain, a mostly bald head, fake teeth, an attitude of oily greediness and the relentless smoking of cigarettes in every damn scene. The only thing McConaughey doesn’t do makeup- or affectation-wise is (a) walk with a pronounced limp or (b) wear a Quasimido-like hunchback prosthetic. The McConnaissance was over after Sea of Trees, but his Gold performance made me want to run and hide — no offense.”

All three of the rumored Star Wars, Episode VIII titles blow chunks. (1) Star Wars VIII: Forces of Destiny…what the hell does that mean? Every particle of matter in the universe has some kind of destiny caused by something. The idea that certain forces guide the destiny of this or that is about as interesting as the notion that sunlight is good for flowers; (2) Star Wars VIII: Tales of the Jedi Temple….who wants to hang out in a temple? Stars Wars fans want to hang out on Endor, Tatooine, the latest Death Star and the ice planet of Hoth…places like that; (3) Stars Wars VIII: The Order of the Dark Side…another loser title. Who or what is thinking up these things? A software program?

Imagine that this guy, who’s about 30, has been seen in a couple of highly regarded indie films and has just been cast as the second lead in a new HBO longform. Does he have that X factor thing? Could he make it in our realm? Or was he the kind of actor who could’ve only broken into Hollywood back in the mid ’40s?

I kind of hate peanut butter. I tend to eat it guiltily. I usually hate myself, in fact, after eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I hate the after-odor. But I really despise the gloopy, syrupy kind of peanut butter that they sell for double the price at high-end health food stores. You can almost drink the stuff. The only peanut butter I can half-stand is Skippy chunky.

Holiday trimmings on the Paramount lot — taken after my second viewing of Fences three or four nights ago.

With the conclusion of the Venice-Telluride-Toronto cycle I began to be convinced that La La Land‘s Emma Stone was the Best Actress contender to beat. I believed that she had easily delivered the strongest, most achey-breaky female performance of the year. Due respect to Stone’s competitors, but I settled into this belief more and more as the season progressed. And I still think that now. But so far, no one except for the relatively small fraternity represented by the Gold Derby-ites and Gurus of Goldies seems to be agreeing with me. On the journalistic side, I mean. Obviously the industry has yet to be heard from.

I’ve been told over and over that critics awards and Academy/guild awards don’t overlap, but I couldn’t help but feel at least a little surprised when Elle‘s Isabelle Huppert (who is wholly riveting in Paul Verhoeven‘s film) kept winning in the early cycle, and with no wins for Stone. So far Huppert has won with the New York Film Critics Circle, the Gotham Awards, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Chicago Film Critics Association, the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and two or three other groups.

And then tonight, something big happened — Jackie‘s Natalie Portman (who has also given an excellent performance) won a Best Actress award from the Broadcast Film Critics Association.

Portman’s BFCA win is significant because for the last several years overlaps in voting patterns between the Academy and the BFCA have happened more often than overlaps between the Academy and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (i.e., the Golden Globe awards). At the very least tonight’s Portman win suggests that she may have more heat than Stone…maybe. This doesn’t mean Stone isn’t going to pull off a late-cycle surge or that Huppert isn’t going to start winning again. A liberal interpretation of the Best Actress race at this point says it’s a three-way between Stone, Portman and Huppert, but the question has to be asked — when is Stone going to win something? Anything?

Mark Pellington‘s The Last Word is obviously a mainstream commercial thing, but the writing sounds half-decent. Shirley MacLaine playing yet another variation of her patented headstrong woman that goes all the way back to Terms of Endearment. Amanda Seyfried, Thomas Sadoski, AnnJewel Lee Dixon, Philip Baker Hall, Tom Everett Scott, Alanna Ubach and Gedde Watanabe. Debuting at Park City’s Eccles at next month’s Sundance Film Festival. Opening on 3.10.17.

Lily Gladstone, the somewhat surprising winner of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Best Supporting Actress award for her lovestruck Certain Women performance, has triumphed again. The Boston Society of Film Critics, which just finished voting, has given her the same trophy.

Best Picture: La La Land
Best Director: Damien Chazelle, La La Land
Best Actor: Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea
Best Actress: Isabelle Huppert, Elle and Things to Come
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali, Moonlight
Best Supporting Actress, Lily Gladstone, Certain Women
Best Screenplay: Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea
Best Documentary: O. J.: Made in America

If you really value movie craft in all its guises, you can celebrate George Roy Hill‘s The Sting as much as Martin Scorsese‘s Silence, Samuel Fuller‘s Forty Guns, Robert Bresson‘s Au Hasard Balthazar, Barry Jenkins‘ Moonlight or Asghar Farhadi‘s The Salesman. A great film is a great film.

The snobs will never admit this in certain cases, of course. That’s the cave they live in. They hate movies that feel good. Today’s assignment: Name some really good films that the snooties have always spat upon, or at least that were critically loathed when they first opened only to be given their critical due years later. But no comic-book CG superhero films.

A little over four years ago I ran a piece about The Sting. It was basically an answer to a question that Pauline Kael posed 43 years ago: “What is this movie about anyway?” Answer: Emotional comfort in the form of assured professional craft. It’s about conning people into caring about a shallow story with no themes or subcurrents whatsoever. It’s about keeping them intrigued even though the good-guy con artists have the upper hand all the way.

I once called the Chicago Limited poker-game scene “the most satisfyingly shot and performed scene of its type in Hollywood history because it’s not about poker, but about two cheats trying to out-fuck each other. Paul Newman‘s smug and rascally confidence is key, but the whole thing really depends upon Robert Shaw‘s seething rage — the scene wouldn’t play without it. It’s all about boiling blood.

Yesterday a Crown Heights guy in his late 20s wrote me about Pablo Larrain‘s Jackie, which he’d just seen at the Alamo Drafthouse and “really liked…it’s a very skilled art film that does a good job sticking a story.” He believes that Natalie Portman is “on another level” vs. La La Land‘s Emma Stone, whose performance he respects and appreciates but doesn’t love.

“Portman’s interpretation seems absolutely spot-on,” he wrote. “She captured Jackie’s measured personality [along with] her raw human self.

“I’m just surprised Stone has the lead in the Best Actress race now,” he went on. “To me, it’s not really that close, and with the political winds and all, this film makes you feel more sadness about where we are now. Makes you mad thinking about what Melania Trump will do to the White House interior…the theme about ‘there will never be another Camelot’ resonates especially.”

Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil said the other day that Academy and guild members generally don’t vote for the best but for “the most.” In a Best Actress realm that means the saddest, the hardest struggle, the most tearful, pronounced, pulled from the heart, etc. In that sense I’d say Stone and Portman are a 50-50 tossup at this stage.

I love Tom Wolfe‘s description of Jackie Kennedy in “The Right Stuff“:

“She had a certain Southern smile, which she had perhaps picked up at Foxcroft School, in Virginia, and her quiet voice, which came through her teeth, as revealed by the smile. She barely moved her lower jaw when she talked. The words seemed to slip between her teeth like exceedingly small slippery pearls.”