People aren’t that different, that particular. They tend to fall into groups, genres, patterns, familiar behaviors. The only times I’ve been taken aback by people with truly unexpected or surprising “never heard that before” viewpoints is when I’m talking to (a) people in pajamas who’ve recently escaped from insane asylums or (b) brilliant iconoclasts, fickle neurotics, spirited crazies, X-factor creatives, etc. Most of whom tend to live in the same cities and even hang with each other at the same bars and cafes.

Produced in part by James L. Brooks (whose name used to mean a hell of a lot in the ’90s), The Edge of Seventeen (STX, 9.30) seems sharper and more angsty than your typical “miserable 17 year old girl trying to find a semblance of peace or satisfaction” dramedy. Directed and written by Kelly Fremon, pic costars Hailee Steinfeld (who’s now actually 19!), Haley Lu Richardson, Blake Jenner, Woody Harrelson and Kyra Sedgwick. Harrelson’s teacher character telling Steinfeld’s that “you need to watch out for run-on sentences” is what sold me.

It’s no secret I wasn’t much of a fan of The Birth of a Nation when I saw it at Sundance. But I do think it’s strong and compelling enough to become a hot conversational topic and most likely be Best Picture nominated and make a lot of dough all through award season and up to the Oscar telecast in late February. I may not be down on my knees in religious worship, but I recognize that Nate Parker‘s film is presenting a very strong narrative/myth, and that the mix of it and the present-day climate might prove highly combustible in the coming months.

There’s a belief out there that John Lee Hancock‘s The Founder (Weinstein Co., 12.16) was made for a mere $7 million. (Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson reported this figure last May, possibly after checking with the IMDB). That sounds low but maybe. I’ve always heard that ’50s period films (old cars, settings, wardrobe) tend to be pricey, not to mention the services of an established helmer like Hancock plus the hotshit, whambam, marquee-flasharoonie Michael Keaton plus respected, well-known costars Laura Dern, Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch, Patrick Wilson, et. al.

A $7 million budget is good news for a film that, to go by Robert Siegel‘s script, is basically a downish portrait of dog-eat-dog entrepenurial capitalism — a movie that basically says “sometimes it takes a manipulative shithead to orchestrate a big success.”

Good low-budget films get made all the time — Jeff Nichols‘ Take Shelter ($1 million), Garden State ($2.5 million), Sofia Coppola‘s Lost in Translation ($4 milllon), Animal Kingdom ($5 million), Jason Reitman‘s Juno ($7.5 millon), Dope ($700,000), Steven Soderbergh‘s Magic Mike ($7 million). But none of these were “period”. If the $7 million figure is correct everyone must have worked for scale. I’m told that Keaton only got a lousy $250K for Spotlight. The services of Dern, Offerman, Lynch and Wilson aren’t that costly, I gather.

Pic was co-financed last year by The Weinstein Co. (which has domestic distrib rights) and Film Nation. Film Nation handled international sales. The Combine apparently managed the hands-on producing. I double-checked with the Weinstein Co. about the $7 million figure — no response so far.

This day-old anti-Donald Trump spot, created by the Hillary Clinton campaign, is easily the most artful, skillfully assembled political ad since Bernie’s “Looking for America” piece, which floored everyone, tapped right into the bloodstream. Trump-supporting dumbshits won’t get it, of course, any more than they understood that restricting the sale of automatic weapons was vital in the wake of the Newtown massacre.

Is there anyone who wasn’t presuming in the immediate aftermath of the Nice tragedy that the late killer wasn’t some kind of Islamic nutter? Was anyone wondering if he/she was Swedish? The fact that the truck-driving fiend has been revealed to have been Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old, divorced, Tunisian-born father of three…well, no surprise.

But he may not have been any kind of radical, jihad-minded, ISIS-following terrorist. Not as we tend to imagine this kind of pathology, at least. More like a raging loser, a rogue who exploded, closer to the Orlando killer than those behind the Paris, Brussels or San Bernardino slayings.

A N.Y. Times story reports that Bouhlel, a delivery guy, “had a history of petty crime, including theft, going back to 2010, and he received a six-month suspended sentence in March for assaulting a driver during an altercation in January.” To my knowledge no terrorist organization or website has allied itself with Bouhlel or cheered his despicable act.

I for one am disappointed with Owen Gleiberman‘s review of Star Trek Beyond (Paramount, 7.22). Speaking as a confirmed hater/enemy of all things Justin Lin (except for the Sundance cut of Better Luck Tomorrow), I was hoping Gleiberman would vivisect with glee. Alas, he’s written a fair-minded assessment that says “not great but not too bad in a place-holding way.”

To make up for this I’ve assembled some excerpts that focus on the negative. That’s fair, no?

(a) “For all the addictive intensity of its visual flourishes, Star Trek Beyond is the most prosaic and, in many ways, the least adventurous of the Abrams-era Star Trek outings.”

(b) “It’s not until the halfway point of Star Trek Beyond when [director] Lin stages a sequence that truly seems to get his juices flowing.”

(c) “To say that the movie fails to break new ground would be putting it mildly. It truly feels like an extended [Trek TV] episode, without a single ‘Oh, wow!’ trick up its sleeve, which may be why, until the eye-popping climax, it’s more earnest than exciting.”

One of the biggest regrets of my life, personal and professional, happened at the ’01 Toronto Film Festival. A minor thing but at the same time, upon reflection, big. It basically involved my blowing off the great Debra Winger. The episode has strangely never left me.

I was exiting a press & industry screening of Big Bad Love, an indie drama about a boozy writer (played by director and co-screenwriter Arliss Howard) and his estranged wife (Winger, who was/is married to Howard). And like everyone else, I was somewhat surprised to find Winger and Howard standing in the lobby just outside the theatre, mingling and chatting.

I tend to shy away from this kind of encounter — too sporadic, too competitive — but this time I was especially averse as I didn’t want to share reactions to Big Bad Love, which were generally negative. But as I walked by Winger, who was being conversationally devoured by a small wolf pack, she looked right past them and, for maybe two and a half seconds, right at me. I recognize or know you on some level, her eyes said. C’mon over and we’ll talk a bit. And like the candy-ass I sometimes am, I immediately dropped my gaze and bolted.

At that moment I could and would have spoken to Winger for at least a couple of hours about almost anything, gladly, but not Big Bad Love. I was also a bit taken aback — intimidated — by those laser-beam eyes. And of course, by ducking her gaze I was giving her a negative review, and I’m sure she felt that, a little flash moment in her brain.

If I’d been able to push past my wimpiness I would have walked over and said something along the lines of “just want to convey my respect and fan affection…the movie didn’t get me, to be honest, but you did. And I love Mike’s Murder.” The encounter happened during the first weekend (i.e., the second or third day) of the festival. Two or three days later the World Trade Center was attacked.

Several months after the all-too-brief release of James Bridges‘ Mike’s Murder on 3.9.84, a short review by New Yorker critic Pauline Kael was published. Here’s a portion of it:

“A few days after seeing the newly manufactured, disposable Legal Eagles, I noticed that Debra Winger‘s last picture to be released, Mike’s Murder, was listed for Showtime in the New York Times TV schedule, and that the Times‘ advice was ‘Skip it.’ Please, don’t skip it next time it comes around — or, if you can, rent it.

“I wasn’t able to see this film during its unheralded, minuscule New York run in 1984, but I caught up with it on HBO last year…[I]t has two superb performances — a full-scale starring one by Winger, and a brief intense one by Paul Winfield. She’s a radiantly sane young bank teller who has an affair with Mike (Mark Keyloun). She likes him — you can see her eagerness, even though she knows how to be cool and bantering with him…

“Winger has thick, long, loose hair and a deep, sensual beauty in this movie. Bridges wrote the role for her after directing her in Urban Cowboy, and you feel the heroine’s expanding awareness in Winger’s scenes with Keyloun and her scenes with Winfield. It’s a performance that suggests what Antonioni seemed to be trying to get from Jeanne Moreau in La Notte, only it really works with Winger — maybe because there’s nothing sullen or closed about her. We feel the play of the girl’s intelligence, and her openness and curiousity are part of her earthiness, her sanity.

It’s 10:12 pm back east. The first public screenings of Ghostbusters will start in a few and end by 12:30 or 1 am. Curious to know what people think…that’s all.

“It’s formula bullshit, of course — what else could it be? — but if you can lower your standards and just sit back and take it, it’s 80 minutes of silly ‘fun’ — fun defined as nodding submission to a super-budget presentation of a franchise concept that’s moderately amusing here and there and doesn’t piss you off. After the first 80 minutes it eats itself, leaving us to endure 35 minutes of CG overkill — Zack Snyder‘s Man of Steel finale meets the Independence Day sequel meets the Pillsbury doughboy monster meets the end of the world.” — From my own HE review, posted on 7.10.

“Much has already been written in advance of the opening of “Ghostbusters” about how the film will serve as a referendum on the future success or failure of female-centric Hollywood movies. All I can say is, I certainly hope this dreary, bleary comedy doesn’t end up serving as a referendum on anything. That would be a disservice to women, not to mention movies.” — Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor.

“Word to the studios: We lack penises, not brains! Taking a creaky but beloved Bill Murray franchise and recasting it with chicks isn’t progress. Ghostbusters demonstrates that a lame concept can’t make a female-driven film stronger. Meanwhile, shaming men as fanboys or misogynists for not embracing this dreck doesn’t help. [This] bloated 3-D action-adventure is symptomatic of a larger problem in this summer of chaos: sequel-itis. This dread disease — the reboot, the sequel, the prequel — squashes Hollywood one tent-pole film at a time like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Manhattan.” — Thelma Adams, The Observer.