I’ve been tapping out my mezzo-mezzo review of Jason Bourne, having finally seen it last night and being more or less in agreement with the “yes but it’s not enough” crowd. But Peter Debruge’s curiously affectionate review of David Lowery‘s Pete’s Dragon (Disney, 8.12) just landed in my inbox, and now I’m growling and seething. Bourne will have to wait.

I’m always ready to sink into an absurd, wildly illogical fantasy as long as the filmmakers are willing to supply some excuses and rationales. Just work with me, guys. Help me to half-believe in your children’s storybook scenario by answering some basic questions, and the effort alone will most likely win me over. Really. I’m not looking for trouble. Help me be a kid again. I’ll take the plunge.

Just keep in mind that when you make a movie you’re creating your own universe with your own laws, but this universe has to be whole and spherical and at least somewhat specific. Which also means that it has to adhere on some level to a semblance of natural law. Another part of the deal is that you, the creator, have to at least make an attempt to sell your fresh universe to a skeptical audience member (i.e., myself).

Did the Pete’s Dragon filmmakers understand these rules? Did they do the right, responsible thing when they put it together? Of course not.

Pete’s Dragon is basically an E.T.-like fable about a cute young kid with a profound attachment to an exotic, extremely vulnerable creature whom the authorities will want to capture, inspect and imprison for the purposes of scientific study or commercial exploitation. Ever heard this one before?

The loving family members who adopt the kid and help him protect the creature are played by Bryce Dallas Howard, Wes Bentley, Oona Laurence and Robert Redford — you all know the drill. The selfish, Trump-supporting bad guy (i.e., Bentley’s brother) who wants to capture the beast and sell worldwide rights is played by Karl Urban.

A big flatscreen filled with all those monochrome Presidents, and then the screen being smashed, glass ceiling-wise, with shards falling away and a smiling Hillary Clinton, wearing a bright red tunic, emerging as a very possible next President, and the DNC emotions that followed. My feelings about Clinton aside, this was pretty good television. I was impressed; I admired it. When slick promotion really slams it home and falls into place just so, it can get you in the gut.

I went to a seriously rowdy party in Mill Valley in the early ’80s. I arrived late with a friend, drank a fair amount of Jack Daniels, got fairly bombed, nuzzled a couple of girls and awoke the next morning at dawn — fully dressed and sitting in a chair at a dinner table with a half-filled drink in my right hand. It’s always amusing to remember wild parties and whatnot, but bacchanalia in and of itself isn’t funny in a movie. When I worked at Cannon publicity in the late ’80s my colleagues used to joke a lot about sex. I used to say “the more you joke about it, the less you’re getting.” Same with heavy boozing and Chris Farley behavior at parties. The more you’re into stumbling around and dancing on table-tops, the more clueless and anxiety-ridden you are deep down. Translation: If you do it once in a while, fine, but if you’re getting bombed and silly every weekend you’ve got a problem.

During the last six years of his movie-star career, Humphrey Bogart took to wearing bow ties. And when he began doing that, sometime around 1950’s In A Lonely Place or ’51’s The Enforcer, he started to suppress and de-mystify his image. He went from radiating that classic Bogart vibe — that confident, half-surly, nocturnal know-it-all thing he’d owned since The Maltese Falcon — to something a little cautious and less swaggering. He began to look less like a private detective or a soldier of fortune and more like an accountant or a department store manager. Every time I see a Bogart bow tie movie (they also include Deadline U.S.A., Beat The Devil, The Barefoot Contessa and The Harder They Fall) something inside me wilts.

James Schamus‘s Indignation (Summit/Roadside, 7.29) is a respectable, adult-friendly, nicely refined period drama (i.e., early ’50s) about values, academia, obstinacy, surprisingly good sex, Jews (in particular a tough Jewish mom) and — this is key — brutally cruel fates. The ending alienated me to no end, and I can’t explain why unless I discuss (or at least allude to) the last 15 minutes. So that’s what I’m going to do.

If you’re planning on seeing Indignation this weekend (which I’m recommending by the way — any film that riles or angers is usually up to something interesting), you might want to do that before reading this.

If for no other reason Indignation is worth the price for a 16-minute interrogation scene that happens in Act Two. It’s between a Winesburg College freshman named Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman, once again projecting that deer-in-the-headlights quality that I can’t stand about him) and Hawes Caldwell, an overbearing college dean (Tracy Letts). Hawes senses that Messner is too fickle, too much unto himself, not social enough. And he wants to know why Messner doesn’t mix it up more. But Messner is who he is — stand-offish, bright, obstinate, something of a Jewish mama’s boy. And so he stiffens and lets Caldwell have it right back.

It’s “theatre”, this fine scene. Dialogue, dialogue, point, counter-point. It doesn’t exactly “go” anywhere but it grabs and holds.

But the story! And the mostly positive reviews (84% as we speak) which don’t even hint at how Indignation makes you feel at the end. (This is why some people hate critics. Because they too often evaluate a film without telling you what it feels like.) How did Indignation make me feel? Pissed. Taste of ashes. I wanted to take a poke at Schamus.

Indignation is mainly about a half-obsessive, half-uncertain relationship between Messner (who, like original “Indignation” author Phillip Roth, hails from Newark, New Jersey) and a beautiful blonde shiksa named Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon) who is gradually revealed to be a victim of chronic depression and at least one suicide attempt, but whose sexual openness and generosity is like manna from heaven for a pissy, slow-to-catch-on gloomhead like Messner.

I chose to sidestep last night’s all-media screening of Jason Bourne in order to catch Pete’s Dragon on the Disney lot. I’ll be seeing Bourne tonight at the Grove, but facts may as well be faced: some initial reviews more or less agree with what I was told last week — i.e., that it’s more or less satisfying if you aren’t measuring it by hard-ass standards but it doesn’t blow your socks off, which of course is what everyone wants.

There seems to be general agreement that a first-act, high-tension sequence in Athens is quite effective. But there is disagreement about the Las Vegas finale.

Last week’s guy told me that the Las Vegas finale excites and delivers, but Variety‘s Peter Debruge seems to disagree: “The instant the movie hits the Exocon convention in Vegas, where the potential for high-tech malfeasance ought to hit an all-time high, the film’s energy flags.” The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy writes that “the big action climax, a slam-bang speed race through a jam-packed nocturnal Strip, is as preposterous and incoherently staged as the Athens opening is striking and convincing.”

Of the Toronto Film Festival Galas and Special Presentations announced today, between 25 and 28 are worth a tumble. Okay, make it 20. How many of the 20 will turn out to be way-up-there exceptional? Less than ten, if that. Probably less than five. More films will be announced, of course, but let’s be honest and admit that right now the TIFF slate feels a bit weak.

I woke up this morning to an abbreviated Variety headline on my iPhone. It read “Toronto Film Festival Opens with Denzel Washington’s…” before the jump. My first thought, “Holy moley, Toronto is going to debut Fences?…that’s very exciting!” Then I realized Variety‘s Denzel possessive was incorrect. TIFF’s opening night attraction will be Antoine Fuqua‘s The Magnificent Seven (Columbia, 9.23), which for Denzel is nothing but a straight mercenary paycheck gig + a chance to go up against Yul Brynner and Toshiro Mifune. Fuqua is a genre wallower, a shoveller, a primitive.

Even though Denis Villeneuve‘s Arrival has been given a TIFF gala berth, it’s listed as a Canadian premiere so the Telluride debut I mentioned last weekend still holds.

Toronto Gala Head-Turners: Peter Berg‘s Deepwater Horizon (you know Berg — Patriot’s Day may turn out be one-note, rah-rah patriotic crap, but right now it reps his best potential shot at non-escapist, popcorn-transcending respectability); Garth Davis‘s Lion (Dev Patel uses Google Earth to find his parents after 20-year separation); Paul Dugdale‘s The Rolling Stones Olé Olé Olé! — A Trip Across Latin America, Oliver Stone‘s Snowden (no Telluride), Jeff Nichols‘ Loving (as an opportunity to re-appraise Ruth Negga‘s performance). Ama Asante‘s A United Kingdom (2nd interracial marriage drama following Loving) (6)

I spent the early part of Monday evening catching David Lowery‘s Pete’s Dragon (8.12) on the Disney lot. Then it was back to WeHo to study the DNC speeches. I loved them all. I got off on all that spirit and brainpower, all that character and eloquence and well-honed intelligence plugging a presidential candidate who isn’t as good as any of them. If Hillary’s speech on Thursday turns out to be better than any speech delivered tonight I’ll be very surprised. Michelle Obama‘s speech was tied with Bernie Sanders‘ fire and brimstone, followed by Elizabeth Warren, Sarah Silverman and Al Franken. The Bernie bellowing ended when Silverman told them they’re “ridiculous.”

I need to express this carefully but honestly, so here goes. If I was a young, rich, highly fetching actress who had decided a year or two ago that for the time being (or maybe forever) that I was into girls, I would naturally go for the hotties. Which is to say the same kind of foxy, dishy women whom most guys find highly desirable, with or without a same-sex orientation. But no way would I be into (here comes the trouble) dykey-looking women, which is to say women who have what many of us might describe as butchy, male-ish, non-petite features. You know what I’m talking about. I just can’t figure why a beautiful, famous, highly rated bi actress wouldn’t want to hook up with super-hotties. I recognize that butch is a lesbian aesthetic in the same way that bears are a gay male thing, and that I can’t hope to understand or relate to it, but it seems curious. No criticism — I just don’t get it.

Respect for famed ghost singer Marni Nixon, the soprano who dubbed Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood and Audrey Hepburn‘s singing in The King and I, West Side Story and My Fair Lady, respectively. Until today I didn’t know Nixon had also dubbed Marilyn Monroe‘s higher-pitched notes in her rendering of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Nixon died yesterday at age 86, from breast cancer. She was 34 when she appeared in this segment of “What’s My Line?”

Apologies to anyone who got a questionable email from me within the last 60 to 90 minutes. It was sent by the devil, not me. I was dumb enough to open my devil mail, and now my email accounts are half-frozen (I can receive but not send). Don’t open any emails from me until further notice! I’m on my way down to Stan’s Tech Garage to try and clean this up. Sorry but I’m just as much of a victim as anyone else.

From Amazon synopsis of Irvine Welsh‘s “Porno”(’03), which is the basis of Danny Boyle‘s Trainspotting 2 (TriStar, 1.27.17):

In the last gasp of youth, Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson (Johnny Lee Miller) is back in Edinburgh. He taps into one last great scam: directing and producing a porn film. To make it work, he needs bedfellows: the lovely Nikki Fuller-Smith, a student with ambition, ego, and troubles to rival his own; old pal Mark Renton (Ewan Mcgregor); and a motley crew that includes the neighborhood’s favorite ex-beverage salesman, ‘Juice’ Terry.

“In the world of Porno‘, however, even the cons are conned. Sick Boy and Renton jockey for top dog. The out-of-jail and in-for-revenge Begbie (Robert Carlyle) is on the loose. But it’s the hapless, drug-addled Spud (Ewan Bremner) who may be spreading the most trouble.”