In the wake of any domestic terror incident (shooting, bombing) you’re not allowed to say what you think, which is that the perpetrator was probably of Swedish, Danish or Norweigan descent. 24 to 48 hours pass and lo and behold, the perp is identified as a guy of Middle-Eastern (in this instance Afghanistan) descent. There goes my theory about the Swedes, the Danes or the Norweigans! Authorities are seeking 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami in connection with not just the Chelsea bombing (will the motive turn out to be similar to that of the Orlando shooter?) but also one in Seaside Park, N.J. Incidentally: The leader of the Ecumenical Liberation Army in Paddy Chayefsky‘s Network was “the Great Ahmet Khan.” Close but no cigar.

I filed my quickie review of Derek Cianfrance‘s The Light Between Oceans on the evening of 8.31, and then forgot about it, consumed as I was by the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals over the next 17 days. The 1920s-era soap opera opened on 9.2.   The reviews weren’t great, and after 16 days it’s made a lousy $11,169,776. Did anyone see it? It seems as if no one cared very much but maybe I’m wrong. Anyone?

“An impressive first hour or so,” I wrote. “A bit morose but well-rendered. And then the film goes full-hurt crazy, the wrong move, tears streaming or held back, stunned, swallowed up, ‘oh what to do’? A guilt-and-suffer opera.

“Michael Fassbender is fine (grim, fully committed, extra-solemn) but he’s still Fassbender. A heaving, pull-out-the-stops performance by Alicia Vikander that makes you want to cower at times. Rachel Weitz‘s performance is all-in but measured. She never turns the spigot on full blast.

“The mesmerizing cinematography by Adam Arkapaw and the fleet editing by Jim Helton and Ron Patane are the two finest elements. You could just watch this thing without listening to it, and you wouldn’t have the slightest trouble following the story. That’s a sign of strong cinema, no?

In what ways am I wrong? What am I missing? I want to be strong and clear in my choices, which is to say choices based on my own gut instincts and judgments. It pains me to go along with groupthink.

Of course I’m going to buy Criterion’s Bluray of John Huston‘s The Asphalt Jungle (12.13.). Of course I’m looking forward to a “new 2K digital restoration with uncompressed monaural soundtrack.” But I want a significant “bump” from this. I want that feeling, that special feeling you get when you’re watching a film you’ve seen 18 or 19 times and yet the image quality just blows you away. I had that experience when I saw Criterion’s In A Lonely Place Bluray, but not with Warner Home Video’s The Big Sleep Bluray. Just saying…

La La Land, Arrival, Jackie, Moonlight, Nocturnal Animals, Barry, Free Fire, Toni Erdmann, Neruda, Paterson, Amanda Knox, Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, Snowden, Lady Macbeth, The Salesman — these, according to most media hotshots, were the absolute cream of the 2016 Toronto Film Festival.

I asked a lot of people during the festival and everyone mentioned these films. Sum-up articles by Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman and Peter Debruge, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg and Stephen Galloway and Rolling Stone‘s Charles Bramesco and David Fear include the above titles. Feinberg’s list included Lion, which wasn’t acclaimed by anyone I spoke to.

Many of these films had previously played Cannes (Salesman, Toni Erdmann, Paterson, Neruda), Venice (La La Land, Moonlight, Arrival, Nocturnal Animals) and Telluride, but the hotshots nonetheless categorized them as Toronto films.

There’s just one little thing that bothers me. The absolute best film of the year thus far, a little masterpiece called Manchester By The Sea, also played in Toronto. Several times in fact, and it floored many critics and Average Joes. (I took a Toronto friend to see it at a public screening and I felt the room, trust me.) But many if not most of the hotshots have totally ignored Kenneth Lonergan‘s film in their Toronto summaries.

By their own standards the fact that Manchester played a couple of weeks ago in Telluride couldn’t have been a disqualifier. So what did seem to disqualify it? My best guess is that the hotshots ignored Manchester because it had its world premiere at last January’s Sundance Film Festival.

I’m telling you that it blows away nearly every other 2016 Best Picture contender in terms of emotional impact, knockout performances and drillbit dramaturgy. The only film that delivers on a similar level of feeling and expertise is La La land, which has won, by the way, the top TIFF audience prize, which makes it, to go by precedent, the leading Big Cowabunga Kahuna in the Best Picture race.

There’s no question about Manchester‘s powerhouse chops, but in the minds of Gleiberman, Debruge, Feinberg, Galloway, Bramesco and Fear, this Amazon/Roadside release is an “oh, yeah, we forgot to mention it” flick.

Sorry to point this out, guys, but your collective decision to treat Manchester as an invisible Toronto film is derelict.

Note: Feinberg has pointed out that THR‘s Toronto sum-up article excludes films seen at Telluride, and yet it doesn’t exclude films shown in Cannes like Toni Erdmann and Ken Loach‘s I, Daniel Blake, both of which are praised in the body of the THR piece. Again, Manchester by the Sea was a major, major presence in Toronto, and yet it isn’t even mentioned in Feinberg and Galloway’s article.

Jimmy Fallon‘s talk-show brand is, to him, naturally, a prime consideration. That cheerful, easy, let’s-have-fun vibe. Play games, sing songs, fool around. Fallon will never challenge a guest with even a whiff of contentious political chatter. So when Orange Hitler came on, he had to keep that thing going. He presumably despises Orange Hitler, but he had to maintain that Jimmy Fallon vibe. He had to lighten the mood and massage this orangutan’s head and make Trump seem to God knows how many millions like a somewhat more palatable guy than what the news media has been reporting and portraying.

I’m back in Los Angeles now, and I’ve just watched the clip (the Toronto Film Festival pushed a lot of stuff aside) and it’s quite obvious that under the right circumstances and with the right guest, Jimmy Fallon is ready and willing to give evil a friendly back-pat. Jimmy has a popular show and a beaming alpha attitude, but…I don’t want to sound too rash here. I’m not saying he’s Joseph Goebbels or anyone in that realm, but…well, maybe I am. Because in his own way he’s not averse to boosting an agent of a potential apocalypse in terms of climate change, Supreme Court appointments, rank ignorance, 1%-favoring taxes, a shoot-from-the-hip foreign policy, etc. Which is a way of saying that in a roundabout, nice-guy way, there’s an aspect of Jimmy Fallon that reflects or…you know, summons associations with THE DEVIL.

Originally posted on 3.21.11, but now updated: One of the healthiest things you can say about anything that’s over and done with is “okay, that happened.” Unless, of course, you’re talking about a stretch in a World War II concentration camp or something equally ghastly. Otherwise you have to be accepting, past it. Especially when it comes to ex-girlfriends. We went there, it happened, nobody was right or wrong, that was then and we’re here now…let’s get a coffee and catch up.

All my life I’ve been friends with exes, or have at least been open to same. And they’ve been open to ease and friendship with me. Except one. 

She was (and most likely still is) a whipsmart blonde with a great ass, a toothy smile and a kind of young Katharine Hepburn vibe. She’d been raised in Brooklyn but always reminded me of a Fairfield County gal. She’s married now and living in Pasadena; her husband — a slightly stocky, gray-haired guy of some means — doesn’t resemble me or her first husband (a doobie-toking small-business owner who owned a Harley) at all. Whatever attributes or nice qualities he’s brought to the table, he’s clearly a swing away from the past.

I gave up trying to be in touch with her three or four years ago. She really wants to erase that part of her life — the first marriage (which began in the summer of ’96) and the affair with me that began in early ’98 and lasted two and two-thirds years. We last spoke in ’11 or ’12. The most significant thing that happened before that was her friending me on Facebook.

Our thing began at the ’98 Sundance Film Festival and finally ran out of gas in late ’00 when her husband found out. I took the hurt and the lumps. I was dropped six or seven times. It was easily the most painful and frustrating relationship of my life. Whether things were good or bad between us was entirely about her shifting moods. Her father had been a philanderer when she was fairly young and this had caused a lot of family pain, so she felt badly about following in his footsteps. But she kept coming back and oh, the splendor.

The bottom line, obviously, is that she’s not at ease with having been a beloved infidel in the waning days of the Clinton administration. Easing up and looking back by way of occasional contact or e-mails just isn’t a comfortable thing for her. 

I could write a Russian novel about what happened during our fractured romance.  I once flew to NYC just to hang with her for a couple of days without the nearby presence of her husband.  Toward the end we had a blissful rendezvous in Las Vegas.  But when all is said and done I’m basically a Woody Allen type of guy — the heart wants what it wants and all’s fair. Even if nothing hurts quite as badly as being the on-and-off boyfriend of a not-very-married woman.

But I’m past it. I’m not sorry it happened. And I’ve always liked her besides. She’s smarter than me. And a good judge of character, more practical, more planted, etc. But I’m deeper, stronger, a better writer.

This being a travel day (i.e., back to Los Angeles), Hollywood Elsewhere has been maintaining radio silence for the last few hours. The usual packing, cleaning and running around. Plus the Toronto weather today was warm and rainy, like Panama. My American Airlines flight is currently over eastern Colorado. The ETA is just before 10 pm Pacific. Sidenote: I didn’t want to mention this because I don’t like whining, but over the last six days I’ve been grappling with a bad case of Plantar fasciitis, or more specifically a really bad pain in my right heel. I’ve been hobbling around with a cane since last weekend. The plantar fascia is the ligament that supports the arch of your foot. If you strain or inflame it, you’re fucked. It’s not just over-40 types who suffer from PF but younger folks who are on their feet a lot, like athletes or soldiers. Sub-sidenote: People treat you gently when you’re carrying a cane. They get out of your way, let you go first, look at you with a measure of concern. Pretty girls have been eyeballing me more since I bought the cane — I guess they’re figuring I’m less of a threat than a guy with two good feet.

A friend accused me this morning of not being sufficiently supportive of Hillary Clinton in this, her hour of need as her campaign appears to be stalling if not collapsing. She’s Mondale, she’s Dukakis. I replied that I’m terrified at the prospect of Trump winning, but that Hillary is just too flawed a candidate and too blind as a strategist for me to go “Seig heil, Hillary is great, all hail Hillary!”

My friend then accused me of more or less being on Team Trump. “WHAT? You sound like you’re having a breakdown,” I replied. “Yes, I truly dislike Hillary Fainting Arrogant Goldman Sachs Establishment Eyebags but I WANT HER TO WIN. More to the point, I don’t want her to lose.” Friend: “If you don’t want her to lose then help her win. It’s not rocket science.”

She’s obviously the only rational, sensible choice, I answered, “but she’s such a terrible, terrible candidate. She’s sinking in the polls now and she’s just sitting there like a vegetable, recovering from her pneumonia.

“And she will NEVER, EVER BE FORGIVEN if she loses. Hillary alone will singlehandedly redefine the definition of pariah if Trump wins. She’ll be like O.J. Simpson — she’ll have to leave the country and live in southern Spain. Or just hide in her house in Chappaqua and never come out. When she visits Chelsea in Manhattan people will scowl and spit when her car drives by.”

Written yesterday afternoon to a critic friend after catching Walter Hill‘s critically lambasted (Re)Assignment, to wit: “I just saw it, and it’s nowhere near as problematic as I’d been led to expect. Pulpy and crude, yes, but fairly intelligent, a little slow but far from ludicrous, and generally not bad. It’s way, way better than either of the Sin City flicks. Michelle Rodriguez with a beard looks like Oscar Isaac in Inside Llewyn Davis. I suspect, however, that those ridiculous time & place title cards along with those animated freeze-frames were tacked on in post. It also seems as if those Tony Shalhoub-interviews-Sigourney Weaver exposition scenes might have been shot after principal photography. And what moron decided that (Re)Assignment was a better title than Tomboy? I’ve already mentioned that the plot bears a certain similarity to Pedro Almodovar‘s The Skin That I Live In. If Sam Fuller was still around he could’ve made something like this.

(l.) Frank Kitchen, the male version of Michelle Rodriguez in Walter Hill’s (Re)Assignment; (r.) Oscar Isaac in Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis.

For whatever perverse motives, Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman and Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich last night praised The Edge of Seventeen (STX, 11.13). But they’re almost certainly being generous and obliging, in part (I suspect) because they don’t want to be seen as older cranky male critics shitting on a teen-angst dramedy, especially one from a female director-writer.

In the words of John F. Kennedy, I do not shrink from the occasional responsibility of shitting on a teen-angst dramedy — I welcome it. I was frowning and throwing my hands in the air and exhaling and checking my watch less than five minutes in. Okay, Edge became somewhat more tolerable during the last third, which is when neurotic characters in movies of this sort begin to fold and weep as they lay their emotional cards on the table. But God, that first hour. And the cliches! It poked and prodded and put me through long stretches of hell.

As noted, Edge isn’t all torture and yes, director-writer Kelly Fremon Craig is a cut above in some respects, but with James L. Brooks producing, I wanted a kind of angsty-teen-girl Bottle Rocket. Instead I got a misery flick. Mine, I mean, more than Hailee Stenfeld‘s because of prolonged exposure to the enraged, obnoxious, take-no-prisoners personality of her character, Nadine, whom Craig probably based upon aspects of herself.

The neurotic, obstinate and nearly friendless Nadine is suffering because (a) she’s an old soul and a secret genius (as was I during my high school years) and her classmates are too shallow to get her. Her father died some years back from a heart attack, and her frizzy-haired mom (Kyra Sedgwick) is ineffectual. On top of which Nadine’s resentment of older smooth-cat brother Darian (Everybody Wants Some‘s Blake Jenner) turns to seething hate when he falls in love with her lifelong best friend Krista (Haley Lu Richardson) and vice versa.

I’ve never liked Elizabeth Taylor‘s coarse, braying performance as Martha in Mike Nichols‘ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff (’66). I always felt she was playing a charicature of a vulgar, bitter alcoholic rather than really letting that misery into her soul. But I’ve watched this film time and again, and the reason (apart from those amusing, inventive performances from Richard Burton and George Segal) is Edward Albee‘s scalding dialogue. Albee died today at age 88 — due respect and condolences, but I have another complaint. I always thought it was absurd to invite guests over at 12:30 or 1 am to start with. Not to mention drinking yourselves into oblivion while everyone’s flaws and foibles are exposed and picked away at, and refusing to end this torture until dawn. Albee got at the fact that back in the early ’60s people of modest accomplishment hated themselves a lot more than they were willing to admit — a significant disclosure at the time.