In for a penny, in for a pound. Embrace, flaunt, proclaim. The tanking of Quentin Tarantino‘s Grindhouse notwithstanding. There’s a suggestion (ignored in this corner) that The Nice Guys, is going to incorporate a scratchy-faded-blurpy aesthetic start to finish. Not that I’m hoping or expecting to be underwhelmed, but if it doesn’t deliver something richer than what’s being conveyed here, etc. Note: If I was lord and dictator of The Nice Guys, I wouldn’t allow face-punching. Creative challenge!

Bar exams are an easier ordeal than being subjected to up-close scrutiny on a first date. Everything you do and say, every inflection, every look, every response…everything is being examined under a microscope for possible flaws or trouble signs. You feel like Henry Fonda being questioned by those two Queens detectives (Harold J. Stone and that other guy) in The Wrong Man. After the 50th or 60th question about your background or your core values or your history with your mother, your soul just starts to wilt. I remember having a “fuck it” moment on a second or third date with a fetching blonde who had previously gone out with a name-brand director. I shouldn’t have tried, I later told myself, because I didn’t have the director’s wealth or slick resume, but I went for it anyway. We were in the Malibu Canyon area, lying in the sun near a swimming hole, and she asked me another question that might reveal a bit more about who I really was, and something just snapped inside. I didn’t care after that, and it felt great.

I’m sorry but I’ve watched this six-day-old segment containing Bill Maher‘s Ted Cruz jokes (“25 Things You Don’t Know About Me”) and I can’t stop laughing. I’m mostly an LQTM type, but Maher is laughing as much as Van Jones (who can’t contain himself) or anyone else, and it’s infectious.

I’ve always found the idea of bawdy bachelor parties offensive if not icky. Drunkenness, strippers, animal behavior. I’ve attended two and I vaguely regretted it both times. But I completely understand the idea of dipping the wick one last time before saying your vows. And not just among grooms-to-be but brides. I’ve gotten lucky twice with women who were about to get married, and it wasn’t really my idea. They flashed the come-hither — all I did was agree. They knew it was their last pre-marital opportunity.

I’m mentioning this because I happened to watch a Bluray of Sideways last night. I’m a big fan of Thomas Haden Church’s performance as Jack, the actor friend of Paul Giamatti’s Miles who’s due to be married in a few days but is determined to get laid during their wine-country safari any which way he can. Jack is a seven-year-old, but Church gives him a kind of dignity because he takes hound-dogging very seriously. He’s borderline insane but he means it.

This morning I re-read some coverage I wrote of the September 2004 Sideways junket in Santa Barbara. Excerpt: “You should have heard the journos at the press table imparting their p.c. sentiments about what a despicable misogynist Jack is. Maybe he is, but Jack is like 80% of all the engaged guys I’ve ever known or heard about. And don’t presume that the syndrome doesn’t include women.”

Does anyone have any weekend-before-the-wedding stories to share?

I’m not saying Jodie Foster‘s Money Monster has “issues”, but you have to give Sony publicity credit for persuading journos and critics that it might. Red flags always go up whenever a studio declines to press-screen a film until 24 to 48 hours before opening, which is what’s happening here. The obvious suggestion or suspicion is that Money Monster‘s soup might be served at room temperature. Or not. Who knows?

It can’t be that bad, can it? Not with a socially urgent theme (high-level financial chicanery), a proven director (Foster), a strong cast (George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O’Connell, Dominic West) and a presumably half-decent script by Jamie Linden, Alan Di Fiore and Jim Kouf.

The political situation thriller (i.e., angry guy takes a Jim Cramer-like financial soothsayer hostage in a TV studio) will press-screen at the Cannes Film Festival on the morning of Thursday, 5.11, with domestic press screenings slated for Wednesday, 5.10. The first U.S. commercial screenings will happen on Thursday night, so U.S. critics will have to bang out reviews immediately, especially if they want to keep pace with Cannes critics, who will post early Thursday afternoon (or roughly breakfast time in New York and 3 or 4 am Los Angeles).

Put it this way: If Money Monster isn’t problematic, it’ll do until the problematic gets here.

I posted HE’s best of the first third of ’16 list too soon. Because I need to add Paddy Breathnach and Mark O’Halloran‘s Viva (Magnolia, 4.29), which I finally saw last night, to the roster. Yes, I’ve been delinquent. I should have seen Viva eight months ago when it played Telluride. But I’m on it now. This Irish-made Oscar submission (even though it’s set entirely in Havana and is spoken in Spanish) may follow a predictable course with a payoff you can see coming from a mile away, but it still does the trick.

Some films know how to turn the tumbler lock just so. This one does that, I swear. You might be suspicious of someone describing a formulaic pupa-into-a butterfly saga as fresh and enlivening, but these are the words that came to mind ten minutes after it began. Have I seen films like Viva before? Yes. But did I believe it, feel it, go with it? Yes. Breathnach’s direction has just the right finesse, O’Halloran’s script is skillfully honed and assured, you can feel and smell the Havana atmosphere in every frame, and the performances are completely persuasive and affecting.

It’s about Jesus (Hector Medina), a poor Havana hairdresser with a crew of close-knit friends (mostly drag performers plus an apparent boyfriend who hustles tourists). The plot is basically about how Jesus’s attempts to become a drag-lip-synch star are interrupted when his alcoholic, brutish father (Jorge Perugorría) moves into his apartment after being released from prison. This angry macho dickhead insists that Jesus not work in the club for the usual crap reasons (it’s dishonorable to be gay, effiminacy equals weakness), and for some curious, deep-seated emotional reason Jesus temporarily obliges.

I own a beautiful Bluray version of Ace in the Hole. I certainly respect it as a film of relentless acidic cynicism and conviction. So acidic that it stalled Billy Wilder‘s auteurist career, forcing him to become a director for hire until Some Like It Hot came into being seven years later. And I love certain scenes (like the one captured below). And I love “I’ve met some hard-boiled eggs in my time, but you’re 20 minutes.” But I’ve never liked it as a whole, not really, and every time Chuck Tatum drops dead on the floor at the end I have the taste of ashes in my mouth.

I’ve tried to research this Secret deodorant ad to see who the actress is. I’m risking sounding like a clueless idiot, I realize, but I honestly don’t know her. Should I? She’s maybe…what, 23 or 24, but she’s got it — alert, foxy, seemingly smart, guarded but open, vulnerable. Right away I said to myself “who’s that?” If she were one of the Ghostbusters costars, I wouldn’t hate it as much going in. Whatever she does next, she needs to keep the glasses on. Update: Her name is Emily Labowe. (Thanks to HE reader Jesse Crall.)

I skimmed through a draft of Mike Rosolio‘s Reagan last December, and liked it a lot. So did Will Ferrell, who is now attached to play Ronald Reagan in a film version that Ferrell will co-produce with Gary Sanchez Prods. If and when it gets made with a decent director in charge (no helmer is currently attached), Reagan could turn out to be Ferrell’s most substantive film ever. Which is a low bar, I agree, but still.

The conventional description is that it’s basically about a dementia-afflicted Reagan during his second term. (The script begins in September ’84 and ends after the 40th President has left office in ’89.) Reagan is out to lunch a good half the time, but finds a new confidence and clarity of purpose when an intern named Frank persuades the former actor that he’s playing the part of a U.S. president.

Reagan climaxes with the Iran-Contra scandal, which resulted in Reagan more or less admitting on TV that he didn’t remember approving the scheme.

The point or payoff of Reagan is that all U.S. Presidents are totems, players of roles, figureheads, and that the guys who really run the show are the permanent, behind-the-scenes players. In Dr. Strangelove General Jack D. Ripper declared that “war is too important to be left to politicians.” There’s a similar view espoused in Reagan: Democracy is too important to be left in the hands of the public.

Ted Cruz is finished and he knows it. In the wake of Donald Trump‘s sweep of Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island, the Republican “shit show” convention in Cleveland just isn’t going to happen. Which is why it seems more than a little humiliating for Carly Forina to have accepted Cruz’s invitation to become his running mate for the Republican presidential nomination. I’d have politely declined if I were in her shoes. They have nowhere to go but down. But I guess Fiorina figured she could get some kind of psychic boost from the attention, something that would help down the road.

“Papa: Hemingway in Cuba holds the distinction of being the first Hollywood production to shoot on the island of Cuba since 1959. But other filmmakers looking to leave their mark need not fret, as there’s still an opportunity to make the first American film shot there since Fidel Castro came to power that isn’t a complete, mortifying embarrassment.” — from Jordan Hoffman‘s 4.27 Guardian review.

“Adrian Sparks, despite his undeniable physical resemblance, never quite projects the necessary charisma for his larger-than-life character. When his Hemingway lurches for his gun in a desperate suicide attempt, you don’t particularly want to stop him.” — from Frank Scheck‘s Hollywood Reporter review.

“Listen to Papa on YouTube clips. Short sentences delivered in a clipped bark. But Sparks doesn’t spark. Hemingway was an old 59 at a time long before 59 was the new 45. But this guy looks ancient. And sorry to be cruel, but he has all the screen presence of a third runnerup in a Key West Hemingway look-alike contest.” — Movie Nation‘s Roger Moore.

Robert Downey to Iron Man/Marvel fans: We’re all whores drinking at the Marvel trough. I can’t resist those Marvel paydays and you can’t resist paying to see me and the rest of the Marvel gang going through the same old motions over and over. Are we providing better product than the D.C. crew at this stage? You bet we are. Am I fool enough to say no to becoming that much richer for playing Tony Stark for the fourth fucking time in a stand-alone? Nope. Is there a snowball’s chance in hell that you, the fans, won’t flock to see Ironman 4, no matter how good or bad it is? No way. And while we’re on the topic, how about another Sherlock Holmes flick? The question is how much and for how many more years can I continue to franchise myself out? Will I ever do a Tropic Thunder or a Zodiac ever again, or am I just a ka-ching machine? You guys are the key. Or, you know, you need to tell me “when.” Because I can’t stop.