All We Had (Gravitas, 12.9), a drama about a homeless single mom (Katie Holmes) and her teenaged daughter (Stefania LaVie Owen), is Holmes’ directorial debut. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Frank Scheck, reviewing during the ’16 Tribeca Film Festival, said it “packs in enough hot-button social issues to have fueled an entire season of The Oprah Winfrey Show — the ’09 financial crisis, subprime housing loans, alcoholism, homelessness, teen drug abuse, tolerance of the transgender community.” Plus this adaptation of Annie Weatherwax’s 2014 novel “also provides Holmes with her meatiest role since 2003’s Pieces of April. Unfortunately, All We Had is less edifying for the viewer. Somehow managing to feel rushed and plodding at the same time, it’s the sort of film in which the main characters display their resiliency by standing joyfully in a pouring rain…it reeks of well-intentioned indie movie cliches.”

It’s been seven years since Hollywood Elsewhere riffed on the issue of hairy female legs. It was during the late ’09 (or early ’10) Oscar season when Precious costar Mo’Nique showed red-carpet photographers that she was down with noticable leg follicles, and then claimed that her husband was a fan of this grooming decision. (Which no one believed.) Now comes Adele telling Vanity Fair‘s Lisa Robinson that she recently didn’t shave her legs for a month. When Robinson asks if Simon Konecki, the father of their four-year-old son, minds her unshaven legs, Adele says “he has no choice…I’ll have no man telling me to shave my fuckin’ legs…shave yours.”

I’m sorry but what’s next, women with beards? Hairy female legs are profoundly unattractive — the female equivalent of a naked man with large sloping breasts or a schlong the size of a cashew nut. I very much doubt if I’m alone on this.

I noticed a dark-haired woman in shorts on the G train earlier this month, and her legs were as hairy as Omar Sharif‘s, and right away I inaudibly moaned. I did everything I could to avoid looking in their general direction, but I couldn’t think of anything else. Then I began ordering myself to stop thinking like an old fart and get with the program and accept that hairy female legs are the next barrier to fall. Marlene Dietrich would be appalled, of course, but she’s dead.

I finally saw Pablo Larrain‘s Neruda (The Orchard, 12.16) yesterday. It played at Santa Barbara’s storied Riviera theatre, under the auspices of Santa Barbara Film Festival honcho Roger Durling (and with Larrain taking bows and doing a post-screening q & a.) I wasn’t head over heels in love with this late ’40s period drama, but I gradually warmed to the dream saga of a renowned poet, politician and libertine. The film knows itself, and unfolds at its own pace. Which is to say leisurely, thoughtfully. It has an undercurrent.

Neruda is not a film about intrigue and twists, or even about a chase. It’s about different approaches to living — a meditative, sensual and humanist-compassionate way of being (Luis Gnecco‘s Pablo Neruda) vs. a small subservient man (Bernal’s government cop, Oscar Peluchoneau) determined to capture and suppress a perceived enemy of the state.

Luis Gnecco as Pablo Neruda.

Neruda director Pablo Larrain, Santa Barbara Film Festival director Roger Durling during a midday lunch between screenings of Neurda and Jackie.

I liked the textures, the culture, the glimpses of this and that part of Chile. And I liked the ending quite a bit. I expected something glum and resigned, but no. And then Neruda, who lived until 1973, is shown living with a measure of comfort in Paris, which is partly indicated by a scene of a naked Neruda cavorting with naked women. (The fact that Neruda is fat is not presented as a problem or even an issue.  But if I was as fat as this guy I would never take my clothes off, not even to shower.)

I’ll always remember the line “where is that fat Communist?”

But there’s no mention of Neruda‘s return to Chile, and how he became part of Salvador Allende‘s government. And how he may have been poisoned to death by a Pinochet loyalist in ’73, and right around the time Pinochet and the military overthrew the Allende government in a coup.

This is the pattern of nearly all historical films these days. You see the partial, incomplete version of a real-life event or a man’s life that the filmmaker has presented, and then you go to Wikipedia and other online sources and read the whole story, warts and all.

“I saw Tom Ford‘s Nocturnal Animals last night,” the email begins. “A BAFTA and British Oscar voters event. Ford, Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhal and Aaron Taylor-Johnson were all there. Great group of talent. The film was well received and I liked it a lot, but Ford’s handling of the material makes it feel more emotional in retrospect than it was on the screen.

“By making a story about a woman so cold that she’s lost touch with everything in her life, we end up with a cold movie. The music, cinematography and actors, however, elevate it to a level of fascination that kept me in. I hope Michael Shannon gets some award attention. He was amazing as always.

Amy Adams in Nocturnal Amnials

“I asked you about an Arrival screening. Anything coming up?”

My reply: The only really interesting thing about Nocturnal Animals, which may strike a chord with this or that industry person but is going to more or less die when Joe Popcorn enters the equation, is the ending when [redacted but it involves something that happens between Gyllenhaal and Adams]. That’s it. That’s the only thing that grabbed me. Okay, that and Shannon’s cancer-ridden sheriff. But then Shannon is always good so it’s almost de rigeur when he scores yet again.

Again, my initial Toronto review.

I dislike the neeedling, nagging voice of the guy asking the questions, but this Vogue thing is a good showcase for the charms of La La Land‘s Emma Stone. I’ve noted before that she has the Best Actress Oscar in the bag, and I feel obliged to repeat this.

I stayed in Goleta last night. 90 minutes hence I’ll be attending a Pablo Larrain double-header at Santa Barbara’s Riviera theatre — a 10 am screening of Neruda (The Orchard, 12.6), and then a combination luncheon, schmoozer and q & a (SBIFF honcho Roger Durling interviewing Larrain), followed by a 2 pm screening of Jackie (Fox Searchlight, 12.2).

Has anyone even seen Inferno, which has a 20% Rotten Tomatoes rating? What discerning person would do that? To what end? Projections say it’ll wind up with around $15 million by tonight. There’s a general notion that the second sequel (i.e., the third entry) in a franchise will tend to blow chunks. Yes, the masses are gullible, but every now and then they can smell a turd from a mile away,

Variety‘s Seth Kelley has speculated that “this weekend’s overall slump could be attributed to any number of factors including sequel fatigue, the calm before the awards-season-contenders storm, the Presidential election, Halloween weekend or the World Series which sees the Chicago Cubs, a major market, in competition for the first time since 1945.” 

It’s the Cubs, definitely the Cubs plus Halloween plus a strong populist suspicion that Inferno sucks.

“Watching [Tom] Hanks bummed me out. An actor without a role is a sad thing to watch, and Hanks isn’t the type to throw in some fruity Brando-like inflections or look like he’s trying to amuse himself. He’s not a comedian anymore. He’s a terribly earnest fellow, and he’s bent on serving the terribly earnest Ron Howard, who’s bent on serving this terrible material. Their symbiotic blandness eats into your brain. Together with Dan Brown, they might have inadvertently discovered the tenth circle of hell.” — from David Edelstein‘s Vulture review of Inferno, which is currently tanking or underperforming, depending on what box-office report you’re reading.

I somehow missed this, a brief Martin Scorsese tutorial about Marlon Brando‘s One-Eyed Jacks (1961), when it popped ten days ago. Scorsese, who oversaw the One-Eyed Jacks restoration with Steven Spielberg, defends the “painstaking” decision to go with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio (the film could have easily and harmlessly been cropped at 1.75:1 or, better yet, 1.66:1) because that’s how it was projected at Leows’ Capitol in 1961. (Or something like that.) This despite Scorsese’s admission that he initially thought 1.66:1 would have been more appropriate. I’ve mentioned three or four times that Criterion’s OEJ Bluray will pop on 11.22 — one more time!

From Huffpost‘s Daniel Marans, reported earlier today: “Attorney General Loretta Lynch wanted F.B.I. director James Comey to follow Department of Justice protocols and traditions and not reveal the discovery of new emails that might be pertinent to Clinton’s case, The Huffington Post was able to confirm on Saturday, following the account of a Justice Department official in The Washington Post.”

From “Comey, Clinton and This Steaming Mess,” a 10.29 N.Y. Times column by Frank Bruni: “Comey said in an internal memo that he was hoping, with his announcement, not ‘to create a misleading impression’ of some hugely significant discovery. But that’s exactly and predictably what he did.

Eric is actually the guy in the UNITED T-shirt, not the BLACK GUNS MATTER one.