Time constraints caused by schedule overlap kept me from seeing all of Amanda Lipitz‘s STEP last night (I caught 55 minutes’ worth), but I saw enough to absorb the basic scheme and appreciate that despite a slightly raggedy approach it’s a spunky, engaging, “we’re black and proud and headed for college if we can earn good enough grades and somehow manage the financial aspect” thing. It’s about hard work, high hopes, heart, family, ups and downs, etc.

We’re all familiar with docs and narratives about high-school strivers. The best of them are rough and real but also comforting and inspiring. We can do this if we really believe in ourselves and work our asses off and if fate or God smile, etc. STEP feels like one of the better ones. It ends, of course, with a competitive performance finale, the outcome of which gives you a nice “fuck yeah!” feeling. (Or so I was told by a guy who saw the whole thing.)

Shot in late 2015 (or a few months after the Baltimore unrest sparked by the death of Freddie Gray), the doc focuses on three senior girls at the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women who are members of the stepdance team, and are known as the “Lethal Ladies of BLSYW.”

The most magnetic of the three is Blessin Giraldo, a spirited looker who’s looking to attend college away from Baltimore, where she’s seen some tough times both at home (her mother suffers from depression) and elsewhere, except she’s having scholastic difficulties and is therefore putting her future in some jeopardy.

The second most interesting is the brilliant Cori Grainger, a shy, cautious type hoping to attend Johns Hopkins University on a full scholarship. Bringing up the rear is Tayla Solomon, whose single mom is a corrections officer. Like Blessin, Tayla also isn’t earning high-enough grades, at least at one point in the saga.

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Last night I caught my last two films of the 2017 Sundance Film festival– Amanda Lipitz‘s STEP, a rousing, affecting doc (recently acquired by Fox Searchlight) about getting out and over for a trio of inner-city Baltimore girls whose involvement in a Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women step dance team is fused with their attempts to gain admission to a good college, and Ted Bourne, Mary Robertson and Banks Tarver’s TRUMPED: Inside The Greatest Political Upset Of All Time. I’ve been working on reviews of both, but I’ll have to finish them (or try to) at Salt Lake City’s airport. My Park City Transportation shuttle arrives in 25 minutes.

Emmanuelle Riva, who at age 84 gave one of the cinema’s saddest and most searing performances about facing the end of one’s life in Michael Haneke‘s Amour (’12) and who also delivered, at age 32 or 33, one of the most enduringly erotic currents in film history in Alain Resnais‘ Hiroshima mon amour (’60), has passed on, a little more than three weeks shy of her 90th birthday. Respect, condolences — a truly great actress who almost beat out Jennifer Lawrence for the Best Actress Oscar.

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In his Variety obit for the late John Hurt, Owen Gleiberman notes that Hurt’s extraordinary range always involved empathy for this characters, a prime example being “his mordant undertone of regret” as the professional killer in Stephen Frears’ The Hit (1984).

The character was called Braddock, and Hurt’s portrayal of this flinty fellow was a kind of game, in a sense. All through the film he did the standard taciturn and frosty thing, the proverbial ice-man, a void in his soul. And yet Braddock was almost entirely driven by emotion. The trick was to convey occasional spigots of the stuff beneath the tough-guy facade.

Braddock was cold, clipped, hard-boiled. Strictly a professional, always guarded, always with the shades. But Hurt’s task in The Hit was to secrete little flickers of feeling, little hints of alone-ness and black humor or existential fear, and — during the third act — to convey hints of buried camaraderie and even compassion for Terrence Stamp‘s Willie Parker.

The fact that Braddock had a thing for Laura del Sol‘s Maggie wasn’t so much conveyed by Peter Prince‘s script but by Hurt’s extraordinary finesse. You eventually get the idea that Del Sol might be the great love of Braddock’s life.

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Bill Maher is obviously 100% dead-on, but the ugly fact is that in today’s Twitterverse, a realm of politically correct wild dogs looking to rip your flesh and consume your intestines over the slightest hint of an infraction…the ugly fact is that daily columnists like myself have to occasionally walk stuff back. Not with some whiny-ass “apology” but a straight, subdued admission along the lines of “okay, maybe I could’ve phrased that with a little more sensitivity.” You have to at least be open to an occasional admission of this or that shortcoming, first and foremost because I make little mistakes all the time. Nickle-and-dime missteps of phrasing, slight errors of judgment, etc. The trick is to catch them on my own or, depending on the situation, admit error when called out. If, that is, I’m actually in the wrong, and that’s a big “if” so watch it.

Key quote: “While you self-involved fools were policing the language at the Kids’ Choice Awards, a madman talked his way into the White House.”

Tapped out on a Park City shuttle:  On the passing of the legendary John Hurt, two of my all-time favorite performances:  the ambitious, duplicitous Richard Rich in Fred Zinneman‘s A Man For All Seasons (’66) and Braddock, the solemn, taciturn assassin in Stephen Frears‘ The Hit (’85).  I loved Hurt’s angularity, that aura of cultivation, that wonderful  sandpaper voice, those intense drill-bit eyes.  And I loved the way he wept like a child when, as Caligula, he was stabbed to death near the end of I, Claudius. Not to mention his legendary chest-fever scene in Ridley Scott‘s Alien (’79).  If only I could post a thought from Guillermo del Toro, who directed Hurt in both Hellboy films.  I hate to admit this, but I’m somehow not recalling his performance in Midnight Express (’78) — he was a fellow prisoner of Brad Davis‘s in that Turkish jail?  Very few will recall his performance as Susannah York‘s professorial, weakish husband in Jerzy Skolimowski‘s The Shout (’78), but he held that film together.

The exotic thrill of tramping through powdery snow drifts and breathing in sub-zero air is gone. I’m sick and tired of bundling up with the extra layers, long johns, jean jacket covered by an overcoat, scarves, gloves and my black cowboy hat. No offense but I want my Southern California temperatures back (my flight leaves early tomorrow afternoon), and I want to hit the balmy Santa Barbara Film Festival. Tonight I’m having an early dinner and then catching an 8:30 pm screening of Trumped: Inside The Biggest Political Upset of All Time, which will air on Showtime in February. Here’s Owen Gleiberman’s Variety review.

Nobody got very excited about Queen of Katwe after it opened last September but that didn’t stop Vanity Fair editors from including Lupita Nyong’o in the company of award-season headliners Emma Stone, Natlie Portman, Amy Adams, etc.

I don’t care if weather.com says it’s 20 degrees outside — it definitely feels more like 5 or 10 right now.

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Miguel Arteta’s Beatriz at Dinner, which I caught two or three days ago, has a great premise — a middle-aged, deeply spiritual Latina masseuse (Salma Hayek) has an encounter with a rich, Donald Trump-like monster (John Lithgow) at a small dinner party in Newport Beach, and then things turn rancid over values and politics.

Anyone with half a heart would naturally be on the side of the Mexican-born Beatriz if and when push comes to shove. One also assumes that the pure-of-heart healer will make things uncomfortable if not worse for Lithgow’s Doug Strutt, and well she should. Tongue-lash him! Slash his tires! Which is why the nihilistic finale in Mike White‘s script strongly disappoints.

Beatriz drives down to Newport Beach to give a massage to Cathy (Connie Britton), a rich client. But then Beatriz’s car dies, and so Cathy invites her to stay for the party. She first has to overcome the small-minded objections of her husband (David Warshofsky) because the dinner is basically about business. The guests are a smarmy Orange Country couple (Chloe Sevigny, Jay Duplass) along with Strutt and his wife (Amy Landecker).

But then Beatriz starts blowing it by ignoring the conservational flow and trying to pass along a moral or spiritual lesson whenever there’s a lull. Then she starts to drink too much wine. Then she throws a cell phone at Strutt over his disdain for society’s lessers. Then she insists on playing a song on her guitar. And then she begins to wonder if she might have a moral duty to stab Strutt in the neck. Then she has some more wine.

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Two days ago a pair of La la Land hit pieces appeared — one from The Conversation‘s Will Brooker, another by Jon Caramanica for the N.Y. Times. There was a third posted two weeks ago (1.11) by USA Today‘s Kelly Lawler.

La La Land is not in any kind of trouble — zip. This is just standard Phase Two nitpick pushback. La La Land is winning the Best Picture Oscar whether the naysayers like it or not, and the fact that it’s become a huge financial success — $93 million domestic, $177 million worldwide — is icing on the cake. Plus it understands itself, knows how to deal the cards, delivers the emotional moments just so. The people who’ve said it’s somehow ungenuine are just pissheads.

La La Land doesn’t fit my idea of fantasy or escapism except during (a) the falling-in-love scene, which is an obvious fit in that context, and (b) the bittersweet fantasy sequence at the very end, which isn’t really fantasy-escapism as much as a sorrowful “if only” moment. The rest of it is about frustration, anxiety, not getting there, powerlessness.  It’s sharp and catchy throughout, but is mainly about how tough and soul-draining it all is.

MCN’s David Poland posted a pretty good response to the naysayers two days ago also. Here are some of the better portions:

“Don’t forget that this is [director] Damien Chazelle’s third feature, and the second — Whiplash — grossed just $13 million domestically. A musical with original music and characters is enormously rare. Before La La Land the list of original musicals that have grossed over $50 million domestic were Enchanted, The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted. And none of these truly qualified as musicals. They are traditional movies with songs.

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Steve Schmidt, who rode shotgun on John McCain‘s 2008 Presidential campaign, has, by my yardstick, always seemed like one of the more likable, media-savvy Republicans out there. After watching this clip last night, I damn near fell in love with the guy. (Woody Harrelson played him in Game Change.)

Take 90 seconds and listen to Steve Schmidt on truth. pic.twitter.com/GEBfUJlTNp

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) January 27, 2017

“Sandra Oh and Anne Heche delivers knock-down, drag-out poundings not once but three times in Catfight, indie writer-director Onur Tukel‘s razor-toothed takedown of obscene privilege in a world indifferent to real pain. While the broad political commentary is beyond obvious, the satire of ugly entitlement draws blood, thanks to balls-to-the-wall performances from the adversarial leading ladies.” — from David Rooney‘s Hollywood Reporter review, filed from the 2016 Toronto Film Festival.