“Babygirl” Instantly Qualifies As One Of 2024’s Finest

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20 minutes into last night’s viewing of Babygirl, I texted a friend who’d seen it a while back.

HE to friendo: “Babygirl is pretty good!”
Friendo to HE: “Kidman amazing.”
HE to friendo: “Halina Reijn is a really good director!”
Friend to HE: “And Reijn wrote it too. Kidman heard about the script and sought it out. The trouble is that Americans have problems with sexual situations in movies.”
HE to friendo: “It’s wild!!! I felt lit up inside….crazy, slurpy, over-the-waterfall sexual films are still being made. George Michael‘s ‘Father Figure’, INXS‘s ‘Never Tear Us Apart’…man! When sex is really good, it constitutes a form of madness. Babygirl doesn’t feel histrionic…it feels real and conversationally casual and verite…but at the same time it’s so highly charged during the sex scenes that I forgot about Nicole’s juvoderm injections…totally forgot about that.”
Friendo to HE: “Nicole had a nicer, larger, more luscious ass in Eyes Wide Shut.”
HE to friendo: “And your package is just as wang-schlongy as it was when you were 28? She’s doing just fine for 58.”
Friendo to HE: “And poor Antonio Banderas.”
HE to friendo: “When you get older and you’ve been with someone for 20 or 25 years, the hormonal magic just isn’t there anymore, and if your wife or partner is one of those ‘okay, I’m here so service me and no moody, half-staff erections’ types, sex can feel Sisyphusian…like digging ditches.”
Friendo to HE: “When the husband confronts the extra-marital lover, it’s time to rassle!”

Despising “Nosferatu”

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The thing I loved about the first two Robert Eggers films (The Witch and The Lighthouse, respectively released in 2015 and 2019) was the sense of restraint and subtlety, the slow-build aesthetic, getting freakier and freakier but on a very gradual basis, etc.

Then along came The Northman (’22) and it suddenly seemed as if the restraint aesthetic had largely been tossed out the window. I wasn’t a fan — it felt as if Eggers had fallen off a cliff.

Last night i tried watching Eggers’ Nosferatu (Focus, 12.25) and I was immediately alienated by the fact that it tries to bury you from the get-go in thick, gloopy horror atmosphere…an atmosphere of such foreboding, a vibe so thick and severe that all you get from it is a feeling of being smeared…an atmosphere that is so forced and extreme that nothing seems to really make sense.

I hated this idiotic vampire movie almost as much as I hated The Brutalist, and that’s saying something.

I took some notes as I went along, and my final note was “I’ll take the 1979 Werner Herzog-Klaus Kinski-Isabelle Adjani version, thanks.”

My random-ass notes don’t fully convey the annoyance I was feeling. Here they are:

“Lily Rose Depp looks too much like Johnny. What is she, 4’10” tall? Most of the color scheme is the same old bluish gray that dozens of other films have used. Dreary. The Carpathian villagers are stupidly eccentric. Same old Dracula shit.

“The voice of Orlok is labored, dopey, ridiculous. Eggers has forgotten about the necessity of a slow build. Nosferatu is so on the nose that it’s almost dull. Eggers really lays it on too thick.

“Irrational story. Portentous to a fault. Wait, hold on…I liked the naked teenage village girl on the horse! But Emma Corrin is too lezzy to play a straight married housewife.

“You’re right — Orlok has one humdinger of a moustache. Too much howling, wheezing, groaning and moaning. Simon McBurney biting off the head of a pigeon. Give me a break.

“You know who Orlok looks like a little bit? Luca Guadagnino if he were wearing horror makeup. Lily Rose Depp’s Ellen Hutter has ony one color, one mood — complete submission to shuddering hysteria. In a word, boring.”

Gatecrashers Is Now a Destination….A Community Thing

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“The outsiders predict the Oscars for a change. We are a motley crew of writers, pundits, critics and industry professionals who have decided to crash the party. With so much of the Oscars sucked into the money machine, we thought we’d get back to our roots, away from the publicity churn that decides the awards. This is for the love of the game.” — Sasha Stone‘s mission statement for The Gatecrashers.

After much blood, sweat and tears on the part of Ms. Stone (who happens to be travelling cross-country as we speak), The Gatecrashers is now a stand-alone website. Smartphone thing, laptop thing…good to go. Everything clarified, probed, investigated, instinctualized. All the important award-season categories spitballed by Sasha, yours truly, Chris Gore, Jeff Sneider, Jordan Ruimy, Bill McCuddy, Ed Douglas, Matthew Pejkovic, Scott Kernens, Christian Toto, Scott Menzel, John Nolte, The Cinescape and Bee Garner.

And not just our gut award calls but links to our own websites with — added attraction! — various posts, stories, riffs and reviews highlighted as we go along. A movable feast if you will. A living, shifting, breathing place to call home.

Right now Sasha and I are the only ones with a user name and a password, but that won’t last long. I’m sending out a mass email and allowing all the members to use my info to sign in, and thereby allowing them to create their own individual user names and passwords. Once Sasha does a bit more tweaking all the members will have the option to change their predictions on a dime….any time at all, day or night…high noon or in the wee small hours.

“I feel like a gate crasher. But a very warmly received one. Massive thanks to the Golden Globes and to Scott Beck and Bryan Woods for spotting my need to kill, and to A24 for sponsoring it.” — Hugh Grant.

Colonel Nicholson’s Swagger Stick

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I’ve been thinking. It’s been 26 years and change since I began penning an online column. Hollywood Confidential, a forerunner of my present endeavor, launched in October ’98. 26 years of rapture and anxiety. I don’t suppose I’ve been in a state of true transcendental serenity more than 10 months in all that time. Still, it’s been a good life. All my life I’ve loved the magical getaway realm of movies. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. But there are times…when suddenly you realize you’re nearer the end than the beginning. And you wonder, you ask yourself…what the sum total of your life represents. What difference your being there at any time made to anything, or it made any difference at all really. Particularly in comparison with other journalists’ careers. I don’t know whether that kind of thinking’s very healthy, but I must admit I’ve had some thoughts along those lines from time to time.

Corruption-Tainted Golden Globes

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How corrupt, laughable and dismissable is the 2024 version of the Golden Globe awards? Especially with Penske Media owning the Globes alongside its ownership of Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire and Gold Derby? If you ask me the Globes are a bought-and-paid-for woke whore show, and for proof of this you needn’t look any further than the ten Emilia Perez nominations that were announced this morning…ten!

A better-than-decent film that I liked or at least respected after seeing it in Cannes last May, Perez is audaciously conceived, directed and performed, but it is first and foremost a trans identity showhorse, and without this social-political element few would be cheering or perhaps even paying attention. On top of which nobody outside the entrenched wokester chorus, which is led in this instance by the LGBTQ whoo-whoo brigade and their media lapdogs…nobody really loves Emilia Perez.

I can sense it, feel it…they love the “idea” of Karla Sofia Gascon, a transitioned biomale, being touted for Best Actress, and they certainly don’t want to mutter the slightest criticism of Perez lest they be labelled as transphobes, but deep down they’re just pleased or “okay” with it. It’s not touching them where they live. They’re not jumping up and down. And the Golden Globes nominations can’t brush this aside.

And how, by the way, can the Globes have nominated Anora, Emilia Perez, Challengers, A Real Pain, The Substance and Wicked for Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy, and not A Complete Unknown — the Dylan biopic that soars on the wings of music, music and more music? It’s nominated in the drama category but how can it not be considered a musical?

On top of which the corrupt Globies nominated the all-but-unbearable The Brutalist, a cigarette-smoking, heroin-shooting, bamboo-shoots-shoved-under-your-fingernails experience if I’ve endured one, for six or seven nominations…get outta my life! Average Joes and Janes will be throwing soft-drink containers at the screen when it opens commercially.

HE is very pleased, however, that the great Yura Borisov, the compassionate Anora thug, has been nominated for Best Supporting Performance. He was also handed this award yesterday by the LAFCA foodies.

Borisov’s competition: A Real Pain‘s Kieran Culkin, A Complete Unknown‘s Edward Norton, The Apprentice‘s Jeremy Strong, Gladiator II‘s Denzel Washginton and The Brutalist‘s Guy Pearce.

“Complete Unknown” Academy Euphoria

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Friendo who attended this evening’s A Complete Unknown screening at the old Academy theatre (Wilshire & La Peer): “The house waas completely full, and the audience went crazy for the film and actors. i’ve never seen a response like this in many decades of watching films at The Academy. Extraordinary.”

HE: “A bigger, more exuberant response than the one for Emilia Perez a a few weeks ago?”

Friendo: “Bigger response, bigger audience. Standing and clapping through the credits. Huge applause for each of the actors.”

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All Hail LAFCA Foodies for Choosing “Anora” As Best Picture + Mikey Madison for Best Leading Performance (Along with Marianne Jean-Baptiste)

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HE continues to frown upon the bourgeois brunch-munching but LAFCA has done a good thing by boosting Sean Baker’s farcical Brooklyn dramedy.

HE also applauds the Boston Society of Film Critics for heaping even more praise upon Anora — Best Picture, Best Director (Sean Baker), Best Actress (Mikey Madison) and Best Original Screenplay (Baker).

Insult That Can’t Be Walked Back or Apologized For

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The other night in the Village Market I was struck by a decades-old memory pang. The creased but attractive face of a middle-aged, possibly 60ish woman in a black overcoat is what triggered it.

I was 85% to 90% certain I’d run into her back in the ‘70s, so to alleviate that 10% to 15% of doubt I did the unthinkable: I politely approached her in the soaps and Febreze and detergents aisle and asked if she’d been running around Wilton in the mid ‘70s, or if she was a contemporary of an ex-girlfriend of mine who’d graduated from Wilton High in ‘75 or ‘76.

It wasn’t her negative reply (no biggie) as much as a resigned or forlorn look on her face that suddenly colored the mood. For she hadn’t graduated in the ‘70s but in 1989, she said, or 35 years ago. Which means she’s currently around 53, give or take.

Alas, my question had indicated (and there was no going back on this!) that her appearance, in my judgment, might be that of a lassie in her mid ‘60s.

Honestly? Fetching as she is for an older woman (she has a cute chipmunk face), she could have been 65 or thereabouts. I’m sorry but some of us look our age or younger than (especially if you’ve had some Prague touch-ups), and some of us look a bit worse for wear. And now I’d insulted this poor lady in a supermarket aisle, and there was no honest way to apologize.

Chipmunk lady had entered the market as a woman in her early 50s, a GenXer feeling pretty good about her life, and left it as someone 12 or 13 years older — a retirement-age boomer looking at a biological downslope.