I caught Peter Berg‘s Deepwater Horizon (Lionsgate/Summit, 9.30) a few hours ago. It’s not subtle but not too difficult to sit through, and at least it’s over in 107 minutes. It’s an FX-driven fireball thing, mostly predictable in terms of story beats and cloying emotion. Call it a blend of Godzilla, Backdraft and The Towering Inferno. And based, of course, on a true story many of us know backwards and forwards — the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion. Yes, just the explosion and how all those oil-rig workers in red jumpsuits managed to escape the resulting inferno, and then a little postscript info over the closing credits.

The film isn’t interested in the massive oil spill and the environmental catastrophe that followed. Sorry, that’s for your earth-friendly lefties. Deepwater Horizon is a megaplex movie for pizza-eating Americans.

The reason Berg has directed this film and not J.C. Chandor (who was canned off the project in early ’15) is because the Lionsgate/Summit guys wanted it kept simple and popcorny. Who cares about that boring ecological stuff? All the popcorn-munchers and Coke-slurpers want are those oil-rig inferno effects (crash-bam-BOOM!) plus a few hero-saves-the-day moves by Mark Wahlberg as real-life survivor and truth-teller Mike Williams…right? And that’s what this is — one of those event films that leave your head and become vapor 90 seconds after you leave the theatre.

But like many Hollywood films about complex subjects, Deepwater Horizon requires two immersions — one, the watching of the film and two, researching the facts online. Because the film is mainly for the grunts (morons, lazybrains, teenagers, under-educated 20 somethings, viewers from the People’s Republic of China) who want their boilerplate elements — explosions, fireballs, mud, grease, good-guy workers, asinine BP execs, guys screaming and groaning, etc.

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Two nights ago I visited the La La Land party at the ultra-swanky Lavelle, an open-air rooftop club with a pool and great views of the city. I didn’t see Damian Chazelle but costars Ryan Gosling (currently filming Denis Villeneuve‘s Blade Runner sequel) and Emma Stone were sitting wihin their own private banquettes, surrounded by the usual array of friends, sycophants and lookie-lous.

Before venturing into the elite area I was standing outside near the pool. I noticed right away there were almost no waitresses offering the usual hor d’oeuvres. Without something to nibble on people who haven’t had dinner get hungry around 9:30 or 10 pm. Lavelle management knew that, of course, but they were almost solely focused on taking care of the swells.

Twice I asked a waitress near the pool “are you guys serving any food?” and I was twice told “it’s coming right out.” Translation: “We’ll get around to serving hors d’oeuvres for pool-hangers like yourself only after the specials have been given their fill.”

I eventually gave up and wandered into the swell space, and of course there were trays upon trays of luscious sushi and whatnot being placed on top of various reserved-banquette tables. Other starved guests had the same idea as myself and were hovering like starved urchins in Calcutta. All at once we pounced on those trays like locusts. One waitress looked concerned as a tray of food meant for some producer or La La Land costar was devoured in a matter of seconds.

HE to Lavelle management: If you don’t want your invited celebrities getting upset because the serfs are eating their food, try giving the serfs some food at the same time. Don’t over-cater to the lah-lahs. The battle between Average Joes and the 1% rages on.

On 5.22 I posted an opinion that Joseph Biroc‘s cinematography in Robert Aldrich‘s The Flight of the Phoenix (’65), while professionally handled as far as it went, never seemed distinctive enough to warrant any special excitement, and certainly didn’t seem to be prime Bluray material. Quote: “I’ve seen it two or three times on the tube, and as best I can recall it just looks sufficient…it’s nothing more than a professionally shot, decently framed desert-locale thing…I certainly don’t remember any mesmerizing visuals.”

And yet DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze writes that Eureka Entertainment’s Region 2 Bluray (which popped two days ago) looks “amazing” and “magnificent,” certainly compared to the unexceptional DVD from 13 years ago. “This 1080p looks fabulous — richer colors, far superior contrast and some impressive detail on the film’s many close-ups…our highest recommendation!”

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A legendary Roy Orbison tune plopped onto a soundtrack always adds an agreeable vibe, some kind of haunted yesteryear feeling, as this trailer makes clear. The buildup to HBO’s Westworld has gone on forever, but the 10.2 debut is nigh. Side issue: I’m a bit confused about the romance between James Marsden‘s Teddy Flood and Evan Rachel Wood‘s Dolores Abernathy. Robots aren’t supposed to fall for each other — they’ve been built strictly and entirely for tourist diversion, and have surely been programmed not to fraternize in any way, shape or form. Okay, I’m not 100% certain that the gunslinging Flood is a robot, but what else could he be? He’s clearly no tourist visitor or Westworld administrator. Imagine if Yul Brynner had begun an affair with one of the hotel prostitutes in Michael Crichton‘s 1973 version. James Brolin and Richard Benjamin would’ve looked at each other and gone “what the fuck is going on here?”

I just came out of Mick Jackson‘s Denial (Bleecker Street, 9.30). A reasonably well-honed courtroom drama buttressed by crisp writing and performances that serve the film rather than vice versa, Denial does a decent job of making an absurd, real-life libel suit seem almost interesting.

It focuses on a real non-jury trial that examined the legitimacy of a claim made by Hitler biographer and apologist David Irving (Timothy Spall) that professor and Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) libelled his reputation by writing that he, Irving, was a Holocaust denier. 

This may have been a compelling case for certain parties within the British legal system 16 years ago, but a legal argument about whether or not Irving’s published opinions about the Holocaust being more or less an overblown myth and that Adolf Hitler was a misunderstood visionary whom history has maligned and more particularly whether Lipstadt erred in calling him a fantasist…well, the mind reels.

It’s just not a compelling story, this thing. In what realm are Holocaust deniers even listened to, much less taken half seriously outside of neo-Nazi circles? Exactly, and yet Denial tries to make audiences care about a legal dispute that has no realistic bearing on reality as millions know and accept it, based on indisputable fact. 

The Holocaust happened. Anne Frank and her family really died. Schindler’s List was not an exaggeration. In 2012 my sons and I visited Dachau, the infamous concentration camp outside Munich, and stood just outside the one-story brick building where prisoners were given “showers.” 

 Denial is a well-made, well-acted film but give me a break.

“He’s a perfect stranger / Like a cross of himself and a fox / He’s a feeling arranger / And a changer of the ways he talks…”

I don’t like it when someone asks “are you okay?” They’re showing concern and compassion, of course, but I don’t like the invasiveness of those words. What they mean, of course, is that they’re noticing or sensing that I’m not okay and that they’d like to lend a hand in some way. I don’t mind if people say “are you okay?” if I’ve fallen onto the pavement or been hit by a fastball or shot by a gang-banger, but I don’t like people to ask if I’m emotionally okay. Thank you but that’s my business, my concern. If I want to share I will but until that happens, please hang back. A friendly hug or pat on the back is cool, but don’t say those words. I never do. If I’m sensing someone is upset, I’ll show respect by giving them a back-pat and hanging close and talking to them as if nothing’s wrong. I’m not their doctor or counselor — I’m their friend. When I’m about to bid farewell I might say “you’re good?” but that’s as far as I’ll go.

Yesterday an anonymous guy from Definition magazine, a high-tech camera site, tweeted an observation about Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, a high-frame-rate groundbreaker that will have its big hoo-hah premiere at the New York Film Festival on Friday, 10.14.

Definition: “Just watched 12 minutes of Ang Lee’s new 120 fps movie. It’s the new reality, like live theatre, you are there, like stepping into the scene.”

This prompted a tweeter named Henrik Cednert to ask, “Is that a good thing or a bad thing? For sure different, but good or bad…? Gives me a bad flashback from The Hobbit.” Definition dude replied that 120 frames per second “gets rid of judder and strobing. Film has no makeup, actors had to bring A game. Intense experience. Much better than Hobbit.”

Some guy named Tweets of Rage, reflecting the concerns of untold millions, rejected Definition’s enthusiasm out of hand. “Doesn’t it still feel hyper real?,” he asked. “Like watching a play uncomfortably close up?” Definition: “I think less so than Hobbit‘s 48fps. [This] might be a case of using 120 as an effect to start with. Ang will only shoot 120.”

Ben Schwartz then mocked Definition by re-tweeting something Schwartz alleges he said in 2015: “All 3D films gave to us was a headache and an increased determination that we didn’t want to see another one.” Definition: “Correct. Now they’ve got an answer. Do the math.”

I can only repeat an observation I heard during a demonstration of high-frame-rate cinematography at a tech conference in Los Angeles three or four years ago, which is that to most viewers the differences between 48, 60 and 120 fps photography are barely noticable. I myself was having trouble detecting a big difference between the three formats, and I know my shit.

I’m presuming that the conservatives will be less dismissive of Billy Lynn than they were of Jackson’s The Hobbit as it operates in real-world milieus, which on some level will, I suspect, seem less jarring or challenging.

I myself am a total whore for HFR photography. Bring it on, please. And make 30 fps (i.e., the frame rate of Todd AO back in the mid ’50s) the industry norm. The more fluid the movement, the better the film seems. I’ve been saying for years that HFR has the potential of making banal FX-driven films feel at least diverting. If Antoine Fuqua‘s dreadful The Magnificent Seven had been shot at 48 or 60 of 120 fps, I would have said “shitty film but very cool to watch.”

Today (Tuesday, 9.13) is the last high-pressure day of the Toronto Film Festival. Or maybe it’s the beginning of Phase 2, which is when it all settles down and the crowds thin and it all starts to feel more manageable. One of the two. All I know is that it always means “olly, olly, in come free” when Deadline‘s Pete Hammond leaves Toronto. It means that the boom-boom promotional hoo-hah is winding to a close. Now I can start to catch up on all those films I’ve been reading about but haven’t yet seen — Denial, Collossus, Into The Inferno, Their Finest, Barry, Brimstone, The Duelist, et. al. You don’t have to speed-walk as much when this phase kicks in. You can breathe again. You have to keep filing, of course, but the pace feels saner.

I was going to blow off Mick Jackson‘s Denial as the 16-year-old libel suit it’s based upon (i.e., David Irving having sued author/historian Deborah E. Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust denier in her 1994 book “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory”) seems absurd. But the following passage in Marshall Fine‘s 9.13 review changed my mind:

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With its acquisition of Pablo Larrain‘s Jackie and its intention to open it on 12.9.16, Fox Searchlight has revitalized its award-season game while filling the hole left by Nate Parker‘s all-but-discounted The Birth of a Nation, which FS had been presuming all year long would be its prime Oscar pony. The intimate, impressionistic Jackie may or may not acquire enough support to snag a Best Picture nomination but Natalie Portman will almost certainly snag a Best Actress nomination. (La La Land‘s Emma Stone, Loving‘s Ruth Negga and Fences‘ Viola Davis are seen as the other three hotties in this category.) Variety has reported that some distributors who caught Jackie the night before last were “worried that Larrain’s art-house touches may not connect with enough ticket buyers to offset the high asking price,” which will translate in award-season terms to problems with the Academy schlubby-dubbies. Jackie is nonetheless the only filmed Kennedy saga in history that qualifies as audaciously artful, and as such is an effort that will win respect and kudos left and right.

Pablo Larrain‘s Jackie is a major stand-out in a long line of docudramas about the tragedy and travails of the Kennedy family. It’s the only one that can be truly called an art film — intimate, half-dreamlike, cerebral, not entirely “realistic” but at the same time a persuasive and fascinating portrait of what Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (Natalie Portman) went through between the lunch-hour murder of her husband in Dallas on 11.22.63 and his burial at Arlington National Cemetery on 11.25.63.

Some of Jackie is about grief and weeping (naturally) but mostly it’s about steel — holding it together, arranging the funeral, standing up, refusing to wilt. It’s almost all shot in close-ups, right in there, no blinking or downshifting.

And the music! Mica Levi‘s melancholy strings, not so much “melodic” as a kind of melodic wailing, filled the Winter Garden last night and it was like “whoa!” The strings and a couple of tracks from the original B’way cast album of Camelot comprise the entire musical scheme. Not even those haunting funeral drums are heard — a ballsy move when you think about it.

Larrain, the respected Chilean-born director of No, The Club and Neruda, makes Jackie his own, and particularly Portman’s. It’s the best thing NP has done since Black Swan, and it puts her right dead smack into the hallowed circle of Best Actress contenders now — Portman plus La La Land‘s Emma Stone plus (here’s hoping) Viola Davis in Fences along with Loving‘s Ruth Negga.

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I was told yesterday that the famously non-functioning Scotiaplex escalator is now working again. I haven’t personally witnessed this but the reports are apparently true. While this is obviously good news, Scotiaplex management retains its poor reputation now and forever. The people who waited until the Toronto Film Festival was half over to fix this situation are ignoble and derelict. If there’s a God these guys will be dogged by this failure for the rest of their lives. Every time they look in the bathroom mirror they’ll say to themselves, “I’m a nice guy with certain attributes but when it came to the Scotiaplex escalator catastrophe of 2016, I fucked up badly…and because of this I will always be a fuck-up in a certain residual sense. Beat me with birch branches. My hands will never be clean.”